I was all excited because I have struggled with Korean the more than 10 years I have lived here. So I went to your site, and clicked on Korean, and it says, coming autumn 2021...it is 2022 already. And I am not a beginner.
Olly, Im a little bit lost with the story learning process. I am going to try to learn French, but I have absolutely no prior knowledge to French. Should I try to learn a little bit of the basic grammar and vocabulary first or should I go straight into it? Because I’ve been doing it for a week and I can’t understand anything, not even children’s books, and it seems like I’m not going to make very much progress with that
I’m currently learning French and listening and repeating is really working for me. I’m now just being to read. I’ve ordered a bunch of Mr Men books in French! I am learning like a baby. And babies listen and speak first. Check out French with Alexa here on yt!
I am a classical singer, and I learned my German very much like this. (I don't have conversational German; as a concert singer, my vocabulary is full of poetic language, not stuff like "where is the ladies room.") I sang a lot of songs and listened to native German singers sing those same songs. At this point I can learn a German song without looking in the dictionary more than once or twice - it is neccessary to understand every word if you are going to perform it! - and I can tell if I've made a mistake because the words sound wrong to me. Thank you for this method - I'm now going to actually learn to converse in German!
I had a Japanese neighbor once and the lady sang opera in German and Italian. She told me she didn't understand a single word; she just duplicated 'sounds' . I speak fluent German and hers was 'understandable.' (mind you; she was singing)
@@dragoncantor I believe you. And German is not my native tongue. But it was impressive to hear a person from whom you didn't expect it, sing in (understandable) German.
Way back in 1990 I heard the same from a musician in Bulgaria about learning English. At least that’s how he explained that he spoke passable English. I was in the country illegally at the time and later felt he was more than that and assigned to make sure I didn’t go any where and out of the country as soon as possible. That was four hours later after they checked to see if my Canadian passport was legit. As soon as they decided it was I was on the train and out of the country in half an hour.
Learning languages has really taught me how hard it would be for non native English speakers to learn the language. It’s kinda given me a newfound respect for people who speak English as a second language.
so, I can only share my experience, but it wasn't too hard for me to learn english tbh. I have it since middle school, so for 6 years now, and yeah, it kinda was there at some point, but as this was already half a decade ago, I can't really remember it that well
The big advantage of English is that you don’t have to be great at it to be understood. You don’t need to get it grammatically correct, heck, most of the population don’t! 😂
actually from all of the foreign languages i got to learn english is one of the easiest bc of simple grammar. i mean look at all those conjugations in german, latvian and some slavic languages, and different scrips in some asian languages - compared to them, english really is the best language to learn as the second one. thank god it's most popular language on the planet and not some arabic or japanese.
I've been learning Japanese occasionally for 1,5 year and last week I suddenly had a dream where I have a full conversation with someone in Japanese only. That's when I realized that I'm finally making quite a progress 😂 Thanks for the tips Olly, looking forward to apply it myself 👌
It reminds me of the turning point in my English learning process. I had a dream about lecturing about the differences between leopards and Jaguars in English. It was 5 years ago and I could hardly speak a word in English at the time (even though I spent hours reading English novels and magazines every day). it inspired me a lot.
Last week, I finally had a dream in the language I've been learning for the past three years! Although all the vocabularies were things I knew (obviously), I felt like I could finally create and tell a story in the language!!
@@Zarastro54 That depends on whether you mean “Native” as in the the first language you learnt growing up, or “Native” as in the native language of the country. If you mean the former, then it is possible to have a dream with no conversation therefore no language. If you mean the latter, then it is entirely likely to do so regularly. Hope this helped :)
Language learner and ESL teacher here - I use a lot of these tips already, and I give them to my students! Adding on to this, I often suggest that if my students have a favorite book, something they read over and over again in their native language, read it in English instead. I have done the same thing, and when you read something you already know, you can follow the plot even if you only understand as little as 10% of the vocab. I also tell my students to read it out loud! With English this can be tricky, as it's hard to guess pronunciation just by the spelling. But with more phonetic languages, once you pick up the pronunciation rules, it's a breeze!
This method has worked great for me in French. I switched to Story / Input based learning (mostly podcasts, news articles, and novels) about a year into my French studies and it really supercharged my progress. In ~1.5 years I went from struggling through the "Short Stories in French for Beginners" book to being able to read pretty much any modern French novel with relative ease, and actually enjoy what I'm reading! That gave me the confidence to start with this method from day 1 in Japanese and I'm really enjoying the process so far (about 6 months in).
Yes, in about a year of college study, I was able to get to the point where I could generally follow what was being said on the radio. I could even infer the meaning of some of the vocab being spoken.
I'm currently learning Korean by myself 😊 Sometimes I get a little trusfrated if I can't pronounce the words right, or when I don't know what is being said or written... But then I remind myself about all the little achievements that I've already reached, like learning the alphabet and some easy words and sentences 🥰 It's what keeps me motivated to reach my final goal ✨ (The Korean entertainment industry is a BIG motivation and good help for me 💜💙💚🖤💖🤍) 🤟😘
My favourites are "Daily practice", "focus on plot", and "read at your own level". For many intermediate language learners, (if you want to go beyond stories developed for teaching purposes) that approproate level would be literature aimed at older kids, say preteens. Good writing for that age group includes real sentences, useful vocabulary, a good plot, and social insights - lots to engage adults as well as kids. For me, when I was studying Norwegian Bokmål, Astrid Lindgren's novels for kids, translated into Norwegian, were just the ticket. Her books about Pippi Longstocking and Emil from Lönneberg have been widely translated . They would provide painless practice in any language.
This makes sense. I'm an avid reader. Through reading, I ended up absorbing grammar rules and an extensive vocabulary without actually studying those things specifically. At school, I would proof-read and correct the writings of those who knew grammar rules far better. I actually failed every grammar section of grade school, middle school, and high school. A good part of that was because I didn't realize that what they were trying to teach me was material I had unconsciously absorbed through my reading. Their rules seemed totally unrelated to my reading and writing skills; I had no idea how they applied. Only as an adult did I realize the connection. So, all that to say the reading approach to learning a new language seems like it would suit my learning style.
"Let time do the work", "Do a little bit every day", and "We aquire language when we understand messages" by Stephen Krashen. Words of wisdom for sure) That's what every language learner should remember very well :) Thank you, Olly!
I'm an American, living in the Republic of Georgia. I used a very similar method as this to learn Georgian. In fact, the method is exactly the same except we are not reading, we are speaking and telling stories/listening to stories with native speakers. I agree with these points exactly.
I have ‘French Uncovered’ and have allowed myself to get ‘over absorbed’ in the exercises and looking up word meanings and gender while NOT spending enough time on reading and listening to the story!! Thank you Olly for this timely reminder!!😎
This is a very interesting approach! I read a book once called mythic, which was about how we as a species (humans) learn. We learn by stories. our greatest learning curve is found in mythic and transcendent stories. It doesn't suprise me that learning language is very similar. Think about it. As young childeren, we learn our native language by hearing our parents communicate, and this evolves into story. Stories are the best way to communicate ideas. How often do we use analogies in conversation? allot. Analogies are really just stories. Excellent point on grammer as well. Most people don't even start studying grammer in school until they're already proficient in casual conversation from being with their parents, friends, etc. It's only important after you can converse in the language.
So many people are learning Korean. So cool! I've been struggling with Korean for ages now and found that I've made more breakthroughs since I started pairing deliberate grammar instruction with lots of input. I find that the grammar instruction helps make the input more comprehensible. I lost a lot confidence using input heavy methods - which are super popular these days - and I almost gave up. With a language that has such a radically different grammar structure and doesn't focus so much on the subject, it's kinda hard to just 'pick things up'. Maybe I'm just an idiot and I need things to be spelt out explicitly! Maybe I'm not talented with language, I dunno. But I know that when I was doing research and watching loads of videos like this, finding comments that I could relate to really helped. Still does! For the other learners out there who are like me, before giving up on 'input' try pairing it with grammar instruction. Good luck everyone 😊 P.s. I really like reading stories in Korean. It makes me so much more curious about the language and encourages me to 'get to know it' (which makes grammar so much more interesting to learn). So yeah, read lots! Just don't pit the two against each other.
I really agree with this, especially at the early stages. We are working on the Korean Unconverted course at the moment, and we will be doing exactly that - pairing input with grammar. But I’m not sure Id use the term grammar instruction, more like grammar awareness!
As a fellow Korean learner, I completely agree! While I sometimes come across a couple grammar structures where I can somewhat guess the overall meaning, most are pretty much impossible to understand without knowing them first. Depending on how important the grammar is to the sentence, I can just ignore it, but then I won't understand it any more if I come across it again. So it really helps to study the grammar occasionally, and then see how it's used in context by input.
I learned english very well when i was 12 by watching anime with english subtitles. I used a translator, prior knowledge and guessing. I could later help my sister that's two years older with her english homework at school.
Honestly... Working in Canada and having to read both French and English while I work, has made my French reading comprehension a lot better than if I'd have retried to learn through school... I'm definitely going to give this a go now that I feel like I'm not crazy, and feel actually validated in my way of learning! ❤️❤️❤️
Great point. I will give students a book for home use! I just wanted to commend on the grammar rules. They need to be learned orally before explained and written down. That way the students get them into the feeling first. Once when I tought,grade 8 GERMAN, I hung a pair of scissor onto different places, saying in German '' The scissor is hanging on the window, the scissor is hanging on the chalkboard, the scissor is hanging on the doorknob, etc" Next lesson, when I prompted to tell me where the scissor is hanging, one student said the different locations with the correct preposition and article I was impressed. In wonder I asked him how he knew to answer by using the correct articles He responded"I just had it in my feeling" But in order to satisfy their learning, students should write the rule down after learned orally. It is also a good reference for them to write a story
Wow, Olly, this is a treasure trove! Thanks so much for putting it all into one clear and concise video! I've been learning so much about story learning, and it makes so much sense and is so exciting!
Whenever I feel discouraged or tired from learning language, your videos are the perfect pick-me-up~ Thank you for the education, inspiration, and consistent quality content
I’ve been consuming a lot of kpop and drama since 2016 and it came to a point where I’m kind of upper beginner with the amount of phrases and vocabs I have obtained as most of them are used a lot and ever since I’ve learnt the alphabet it unlocked so many more possibilities, I never considered this until I saw a TH-cam explaining it and now I’m excited as ever to learn the language properly
Hey Olly! what a great video! I agree with every rule. my favorite is number 3. I've been learning German for 7 months and I didn't study any grammar at all. I just read and listen to the story and enjoy reading your stories. thank you for the great video. you're amazing!
Gratias tibi! I've started focusing more and more on studying Latin now that it's the summer and I have more time available. Thanks so much for the tips!
TL:DR - I endorse many of the rules noted above and encourage this approach (*if it works for you; some people are much more grammar learners, and Fluenz might work better). During the Pandemic, I took up a lovely language game called Heaven's Vault. While the built-in language has no dictionary (I asked, the developers claim there isn't one) and had truly awful grammar rules, the method of learning the (fake) language is astoundingly effective. It's taught through music, motion, stories, and history; all grammar is learned passively and additional replays add more complex sentence. Then, in a move that was done by others, I started building on the language idea through complex spreadsheets and updating the characters in the script - for many, many months. It was inspiring!
Excellent advice again. I do need to be reminded to FOCUS on the job in hand. Like Olly, I actually like grammar, but there's a time and a place for grammar. Prioritise! *Spanish Uncovered*
Loved the Narnia reference! Thanks, Olly! One of the things I have done is read stories I already know in English. The Hobbit, Star Wars in Spanish, Harry Potter....
I've never ever been able to learn a language that u wanted to learn because I would start and get stuck on learning grammars. Thanks for the video! I'll give it a try again!
I learned this lesson hard with Spanish because I was so focused on grammar yet I listened to Romanian pop music and picked up vocabulary much easier. Same with Polish. I can loosely understand (spoken) Spanish and can translate (written) Spanish, but I am not fluent because I did not practice speaking as much as I should have.
Hi Ollie, as you I also like grammar but I also try not to focus too much on it because other bits are indeed more important. However, the new tendency to promote learning mostly based on acquisition implies the risk of us learners sometimes not knowing how to get out of our own existing mental structures. To illustrate what I mean I will give a real example. Krashen, yes the expert linguistics mention all the time to say how we should learn languages, has said many times that he loves Spanish. He has a relatively recent video where he mentions he had lovely memories of speaking Spanish with Steve Kaufmann. At a certain point he starts talking in Spanish and he uses the verbs 'ser' and 'estar' incorrectly more than once. He also indicates that Steve told him that it really doesn't matter, that what it's important is being understood. Fine, but it happens that even silly things like "ser bueno" y "estar bueno" mean two completely different things for example, and being such pervasive and basic verbs (or verb depending on the language one is speaking) it sounds very awkward to hear it being mistakenly used over and over again, more when that person says to love the language so much. Acquisition theory would indicate us that it is not a problem and he just needs to keep practising. However, knowing he loves the language so much would you not assume he has had plenty of exposure by now but his brain still hasn't got to acquire that rule naturally anyway? Would grammar be so unuseful that would not be able to help him there? Not even when by now he has probably hardly fosilized his mistake? I would say grammar is more helpful when it comes after your learning has already happened and you feel confident enough with your acquired skills, as a way of helping you being self-aware and induce improvements that can take one years (or forever) to rectify when we're not aware of them. As natives we do exactly that in our own language and it is fine, why should not be fine for second language learners? Having said this, that self-awareness should not take you to start doubting on your own capabilities to learn, just helping you to idenyify and correct your mistakes faster. Improving your acquisition process.
Many thanks. I was trying story learning, but doing everything wrong (okay, maybe 8 out of 10). I'll try it YOUR way for a month, and see how that works. Thank you!
Thanks for your books, Ive been reading your beginners French stories and finding it very satisfying to be able to work out sentences when I don’t know all the words! I work for a library service and have ordered more copies and some new languages so we can share how great they are with more people :)
Hey Olly, quick question, when introducing the audio whilst reading is it best to listen first to the chapter without the text and then add in the text after?
Thats a good question. The other thing I keep thinking about is while reading material is easily available in any language especially for beginners, how easy is it to get listening resources for beginners?
For the reading and listening at the same time, I can’t recommend LingQ enough. I am not big on apps but LingQ is a neat tool to read and listen at the same time while gobbling up new vocab and taking quizzes on old vocab from previous lessons to keep it fresh. It also imports all lesson flash cards to Anki for you. I didn’t like it at first but after understanding language learning more I have come to really appreciate LingQ. It does cost $15 a month but it is worth it if you are really serious about language learning.
In college I sat in a language lab while reading Shakespeare. Listening to the recorded version (LP records back then) while reading made his plays easy to enjoy.
I’m learning Japanese an sov language English is svo and it’s one of the hardest languages to learn for an native English speaker I’ve learned 2 of the writing systems hiragana/ひりがな and katakana/カタカナ and if u don’t know the have a 3rd kanji and u need to know at least 2,000 kanji to be considered fluent in kanji alone using these 3 writing systems is how u write proper Japanese and Japanese is a tonal language as well I’m n5 level rn so a beginner and I find it hard to study so this video definitely helped a lot I have way more motivation. And also u called me out on the grammar part I stress so much I study more grammar than the actual language itself because I feel the grammar is so important but your right I’m only a beginner I shouldn’t even be worrying about grammar at all in the level I’m at.
I have only taught English for 32 years and agree with this idea of activating different areas of the brain to acquire a language. I retired from teaching at university in 2015 and since have edited and co-written about a dozen books in English and Korean in a number of which I appear as a cartoon character. I am wondering about including story segments in our books. I am currently a day away from finishing the editing of a new book in which I figure prominently and will be out by Christmas. Story segments may be too late for that book but there are always more in the pipeline. I think by now there must be about 64 books. We occasionally revise older titles.
Great tips! I might have to find me some Polish children's books to read, haha. I was doing something similar with songs in Polish, I've learned a little bit by listening to their music.
I was thinking of that too! Children's books would be great to learn basic vocabulary and grammar and easily get the jist of the story, especially if you already know the story!
Thanks for your insightful video. Since studying Japanese I've honestly started to look up almost every word I don't recognise, because I won't even know or be sure how to read it correctly otherwise. I'm not sure how to still use StoryLearning effectively while learning Japanese without looking up at least the correct reading of the words i don't know...
I think the story learning approach is cool I also thought of another thing that I think is a cool idea I'm in a language learning server on discord and the language I'm learning is Italian There's a chat room for Italian and I thought, "What if I just read some of the conversations in there" I feel like this could show what a conversation is like since I want to become conversationally fluent so I feel like that would be a good way to learn
Grew up vaguely familiar with German. As a kid, I quickly picked out some of the rules and have been able to translate written German better than speaking it. Fluency may never happen, but I could probably get around easier in Germany than in France (and I’ve had years of French). German makes more sense than French and Spanish.
Number 9 is one of the biggest points for me as I used to read and wouldn't be happy if I didn't learn 5 or 10 phrases from each story. Now I just enjoy the story and make the odd flashcards
Gestures or learning actions helps, when I was learning Spanish I had an excellent teacher who used pictures, speech and gestures to help remember lessons.
Hey! I love your videos, and was wondering... What do you think about reading and listening to songs? Singer song writers and easily understandable songs? The lyrics are easy to find and it is quite amusing! I think this may work for my Icelandic learning enterprise! Thanks for your work!
The examples you give under 'learn the script' are all phonetic. What would you recommend for e.g. Mandarin? Try to learn characters - or read in pinyin?
These are very good tips. I sing in Italian, French, Spanish, and German and my music teacher tells me not to look up words. She asks me what do those words mean in English.
Thanks Olly good points. I have been reading your Dutch graded reader. It really helps. I understand the plots. Dutch is not the most useful language to learn but it is a place I would like to live. What do you thing about learning more than one language? I have at times accidentally mixed my German with Dutch. even tho am not studying German presently but have done in the past. Has anyone studied multiple languages successfully? I don't mean in a linear order which I am currently doing but together over a course of time. On DuoLingo people are studying more than one. I imagine it would work better if the languages were very different like Mandarin and German rather than say Spanish and French.
I’m learning Dutch, just teaching myself and I watched a few of your videos Olly and I though OK, this sounds good. I’ll try to learn Dutch by reading too. Sadly it seems you don’t do a Dutch course. I’ve watched your video on the 5 easiest languages to learn and of course Dutch is the second easiest apparently so maybe this is why?
I’ve just checked and the easiest language to learn is Norwegian and you have a course for that so I’ve answered my own question. :) Any chance you might bring out a Dutch course? Might be too late though, I may have taught myself by then….
This is funny, this is how I learned French, with reading and listening to fairytales. I am surprised by some of these rules though. I love these tips for my next few languages!
I agree with your list. If there was one thing I wish language learners understood, it is this: A child takes between five and seven years to become conversational. If you've only been dedicated to learning a second language for seven years, accept and understand that, to native speakers, you probably are at about the level of a seven year old in terms of amount of vocabulary you command and grammatical structure you use. Children are immersed pretty much every minute of every day, and it still takes that long. We can reactivate our natural learning power by remembering that the most basic learning technique is to listen and imitate constantly.
I've heard Olly say the same 2 rules a few times in different videos.. First, read at your level (70% comprehension) and second, no translations. But where do I start? I can't read anything at 70% comprehension in my target language on day 1, so I feel like I've missed what happens prior to picking up your first story. Interested in how others manage from day 1.
Great question. You need to start with beginner level material for a few weeks, to learn the basics. You can do this with textbooks, and I also make my Uncovered courses to help complete beginners get started with the method.
Hi mate ,great video. I'm considering learning few languages this year , could you tell me what's the better way : Learn 3 different languages in the same time or do it one by one? . Thanks
But Ollie; about grammar in Spanish for example, I am stuck right now in the mid-intermediate level of expressing the past. AR, ER and irregular verbs. Right now I have compiled a list and I keep going over them in the hope that I will be able to recall the right tense when engaged in a conversation.
Hi, this is Lee Sohlden. You are on the right track with story learning -but you can do it way faster. Tune your ear in fully before learning any words, then use passive listening to the story to boost the absorbtion pace. You can learn an entire language, in practically no time -knowing it all by ear, and by reading. Looking up words should not be an issue, as all definitions should be there for you, as you are listening to and reading the story. It goes like this: Begin looping the story you want to learn. Completely ignore it. Go about your normal day. After a week of this, begin doing an hour per day of ear tuning exercises, which I invented. You continue, always, to keep looping that story. Initially, this is to help your ear go native -along with doing the ear tuning exercises; but later it will also multiply your absorbtion rate of the meaning of the story. Third week you begin switching your time on doing ear tuning exercises to word associations. Over time, the ear tuning exercises are just 40 minutes per week, the rest on word associations. I call my system for associating target language words to known words "read thrus". Depending on your level, you read a sentence, maybe just a phrase, maybe a paragraph -maybe the whole story; to see how well you understand the words. Lets assume you are kinda new, and are working with one sentence at a time. So, you read the sentence, but understood little. So look over the provided notes (or listen to an audio of me explaining the story -which by the way, you can also do mostly passively if you choose -works for those on an absolute zero time budget) for that sentence. The notes will be pretty basic -what each word means, what the overall sentence means, telling you what particular phrases mean. For those ready for it, more grammar, pertaining to that sentence, is there just below; but you are told to keep the majority of your time listening to and reading the story -so do no more than toy a bit with the grammar. After looking over the notes (or listening to some of my video) read that sentence three times while listening to the audiobook. (the audiobook spoken by a native speaker, not the one I did explaining the audiobook to you.) Next, close your eyes and listen to the sentence three more times Repeat all of the above paragraph, if you wish, two more times; but then for sure move on to the next sentence. Do not think of this as studying. No need to actually learn one single thing today. Just think of the read thrus as input for your speech center. Over night, your speech center will put stuff together, and will gift you with some of the language. None of my program aims at your conscious mind, so, relax, just let the language soak in. Do this daily. Always spend half your time moving forward to new material, and half your time doing read thrus for previous material. When you know something perfectly -still keep it in the rotation -what you can hear and understand perfectly is the best form of comprehensible input; which will automatically cause you to speak the language. Your absorbtion rate will continually accelerate. Pretty soon you will absorb material in one hour chunks just by reading it one time after briefly looking over the notes for the story. Then it gets better; you can absorb an hour at a time just by ear alone, after glancing at the notes briefly. Then it gets better - just listening to the language cold, you know the story. Maybe you did not know a word here and there, but you know the story. PS -by far the biggest factor in the degree of acceleration of absorbtion of the language, between one student and the next -is if they did not skimp on how much ear tuning exercises they did. A native ear is the biggest key to this system working as effectively as possible. While read thrus, combined with continued passive listening, will slowly improve the ear -ear tuning exercises outdo this 20 to 1. watch my video -says the same thing. There are links to my other videos where I help with 18 different languages which I am learning myself. This is all free, its just a hobby for me. th-cam.com/video/aJIILxwIkL4/w-d-xo.html
I like to make a 25 word and 3 phrase list for every book. I search for the words and i start reading. before i read i read over the list and sometimes after. That way i learn and spend time with the language. If a book takes a month to finish i’ve had a month to know the list as well as other sources of learning
If you watch a film you can put the subtitles in the language you're learning. For example, put Greek titles on a Greek film. So you are reading and listening together.
Thanks for all the advice. What is your view on looking up words in a dictionary after reading. Never do it? Sometimes? Also do you have advice on good novels for differing language levels once people have read your short stories? Thanks!
TBH, if a word is coming up a lot and you still don't know what it means from context, just look it up and add it to your review materials if it seems useful. Years later, I still remember Verteidigungsminister even though I didn't waste any real time learning it. I don't think I even bothered reviewing or adding it to my study materials, it just stuck. Personally, I'd just look up the ones tray come up a lot or that I'm particularly curious about. The further you go, the more words you should be able to pick up from context. Ideally, don't use a translation dictionary if you can help it. But feel free to look up the words in the foreign language only dictionary in a translation dictionary if you have to.
Hi Olly ! I have just bought your book "Short stories in English for intermediate learners". I would like to know how to use it in the most effective way. Thank you in advance for answering me. Bertrand from France.
Start your StoryLearning course here: bit.ly/learn-a-language-today
I was all excited because I have struggled with Korean the more than 10 years I have lived here. So I went to your site, and clicked on Korean, and it says, coming autumn 2021...it is 2022 already. And I am not a beginner.
Story leanring?
Me cries in Latin ....
Olly, Im a little bit lost with the story learning process. I am going to try to learn French, but I have absolutely no prior knowledge to French. Should I try to learn a little bit of the basic grammar and vocabulary first or should I go straight into it? Because I’ve been doing it for a week and I can’t understand anything, not even children’s books, and it seems like I’m not going to make very much progress with that
I’m currently learning French and listening and repeating is really working for me. I’m now just being to read. I’ve ordered a bunch of Mr Men books in French! I am learning like a baby. And babies listen and speak first. Check out French with Alexa here on yt!
Beginning*
I am a classical singer, and I learned my German very much like this. (I don't have conversational German; as a concert singer, my vocabulary is full of poetic language, not stuff like "where is the ladies room.") I sang a lot of songs and listened to native German singers sing those same songs. At this point I can learn a German song without looking in the dictionary more than once or twice - it is neccessary to understand every word if you are going to perform it! - and I can tell if I've made a mistake because the words sound wrong to me. Thank you for this method - I'm now going to actually learn to converse in German!
I had a Japanese neighbor once and the lady sang opera in German and Italian. She told me she didn't understand a single word; she just duplicated 'sounds' . I speak fluent German and hers was 'understandable.' (mind you; she was singing)
@@dutchreagan3676 Yes, that's a "thing", unfortunately. Not recommended. It's much more fun to understand what you're saying.
@@dragoncantor I believe you. And German is not my native tongue. But it was impressive to hear a person from whom you didn't expect it, sing in (understandable) German.
Way back in 1990 I heard the same from a musician in Bulgaria about learning English. At least that’s how he explained that he spoke passable English. I was in the country illegally at the time and later felt he was more than that and assigned to make sure I didn’t go any where and out of the country as soon as possible. That was four hours later after they checked to see if my Canadian passport was legit. As soon as they decided it was I was on the train and out of the country in half an hour.
Same here with me and Italian mate! Lyric tenor
Learning languages has really taught me how hard it would be for non native English speakers to learn the language. It’s kinda given me a newfound respect for people who speak English as a second language.
so, I can only share my experience, but it wasn't too hard for me to learn english tbh. I have it since middle school, so for 6 years now, and yeah, it kinda was there at some point, but as this was already half a decade ago, I can't really remember it that well
The big advantage of English is that you don’t have to be great at it to be understood. You don’t need to get it grammatically correct, heck, most of the population don’t! 😂
actually from all of the foreign languages i got to learn english is one of the easiest bc of simple grammar. i mean look at all those conjugations in german, latvian and some slavic languages, and different scrips in some asian languages - compared to them, english really is the best language to learn as the second one. thank god it's most popular language on the planet and not some arabic or japanese.
Yep, not a walk in the park!
@@x.5364were all the exceptions hard to remember?
The ten commandments:
* Thou shalt read at your level.
* Thou shalt focus on the plot.
...
The 10 commandments (in binary)
@@nyxmiloq4167 🤣🤣🤣🤣
In small print: Please read 5 times!
That's only 2 commandments.
@@Clavers1369 So 10 in binary
I've been learning Japanese occasionally for 1,5 year and last week I suddenly had a dream where I have a full conversation with someone in Japanese only. That's when I realized that I'm finally making quite a progress 😂
Thanks for the tips Olly, looking forward to apply it myself 👌
Great job!
Quite a bit of progress. Progress is uncountable so you need to partitive construction like cup of tea or drop of water.
It reminds me of the turning point in my English learning process. I had a dream about lecturing about the differences between leopards and Jaguars in English. It was 5 years ago and I could hardly speak a word in English at the time (even though I spent hours reading English novels and magazines every day). it inspired me a lot.
@@storylearning Mr.Olly should i read silently or saying the words loudly??
That's awesome! I'm learning Polish and had a dream last night where it was partly in Polish. It's a pretty cool experience!
Last week, I finally had a dream in the language I've been learning for the past three years! Although all the vocabularies were things I knew (obviously), I felt like I could finally create and tell a story in the language!!
What an amazing moment, you should be delighted!
Finally? I didn't have a single one in my native language until I was in my 30s. But good for you, you must be working really hard at it.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade I’m sorry, but how does one NOT have dreams in their native language from the beginning?
@@Zarastro54 That depends on whether you mean “Native” as in the the first language you learnt growing up, or “Native” as in the native language of the country. If you mean the former, then it is possible to have a dream with no conversation therefore no language. If you mean the latter, then it is entirely likely to do so regularly.
Hope this helped :)
Language learner and ESL teacher here - I use a lot of these tips already, and I give them to my students! Adding on to this, I often suggest that if my students have a favorite book, something they read over and over again in their native language, read it in English instead. I have done the same thing, and when you read something you already know, you can follow the plot even if you only understand as little as 10% of the vocab. I also tell my students to read it out loud! With English this can be tricky, as it's hard to guess pronunciation just by the spelling. But with more phonetic languages, once you pick up the pronunciation rules, it's a breeze!
I agree, I can often understand some Swedish and Norwegian when it’s about subjects I know quite well.
This method has worked great for me in French. I switched to Story / Input based learning (mostly podcasts, news articles, and novels) about a year into my French studies and it really supercharged my progress. In ~1.5 years I went from struggling through the "Short Stories in French for Beginners" book to being able to read pretty much any modern French novel with relative ease, and actually enjoy what I'm reading!
That gave me the confidence to start with this method from day 1 in Japanese and I'm really enjoying the process so far (about 6 months in).
Yes, in about a year of college study, I was able to get to the point where I could generally follow what was being said on the radio. I could even infer the meaning of some of the vocab being spoken.
Hey, it’s been about a year and I’m really curious as to how learning Japanese is going for you :)
I'm also curious how your japanese is going with this method
I’m currently trying to learn French, I’m so glad to hear that this method works for you! I can’t wait to try this and hopefully see progress 💜
hi! did you study unknown words? thx
Staying focused is a really great point. It's so easy to read 3 sentences and then decide that now is the time to go check your email. lol...
I'm currently learning Korean by myself 😊
Sometimes I get a little trusfrated if I can't pronounce the words right, or when I don't know what is being said or written...
But then I remind myself about all the little achievements that I've already reached, like learning the alphabet and some easy words and sentences 🥰
It's what keeps me motivated to reach my final goal ✨
(The Korean entertainment industry is a BIG motivation and good help for me 💜💙💚🖤💖🤍)
🤟😘
I find Korean a quite easy language for English speakers
My favourites are "Daily practice", "focus on plot", and "read at your own level". For many intermediate language learners, (if you want to go beyond stories developed for teaching purposes) that approproate level would be literature aimed at older kids, say preteens. Good writing for that age group includes real sentences, useful vocabulary, a good plot, and social insights - lots to engage adults as well as kids. For me, when I was studying Norwegian Bokmål, Astrid Lindgren's novels for kids, translated into Norwegian, were just the ticket. Her books about Pippi Longstocking and Emil from Lönneberg have been widely translated . They would provide painless practice in any language.
This makes sense. I'm an avid reader. Through reading, I ended up absorbing grammar rules and an extensive vocabulary without actually studying those things specifically. At school, I would proof-read and correct the writings of those who knew grammar rules far better. I actually failed every grammar section of grade school, middle school, and high school. A good part of that was because I didn't realize that what they were trying to teach me was material I had unconsciously absorbed through my reading. Their rules seemed totally unrelated to my reading and writing skills; I had no idea how they applied. Only as an adult did I realize the connection.
So, all that to say the reading approach to learning a new language seems like it would suit my learning style.
"Let time do the work", "Do a little bit every day", and "We aquire language when we understand messages" by Stephen Krashen. Words of wisdom for sure) That's what every language learner should remember very well :) Thank you, Olly!
Reading along with audiobook has helped my daughter learn to read in English so much better.
I'm an American, living in the Republic of Georgia. I used a very similar method as this to learn Georgian. In fact, the method is exactly the same except we are not reading, we are speaking and telling stories/listening to stories with native speakers. I agree with these points exactly.
I have ‘French Uncovered’ and have allowed myself to get ‘over absorbed’ in the exercises and looking up word meanings and gender while NOT spending enough time on reading and listening to the story!! Thank you Olly for this timely reminder!!😎
Thank you for this feedback! I tried to include reminders about this in the course, but I think I need to do more!
This is a very interesting approach! I read a book once called mythic, which was about how we as a species (humans) learn. We learn by stories. our greatest learning curve is found in mythic and transcendent stories. It doesn't suprise me that learning language is very similar. Think about it. As young childeren, we learn our native language by hearing our parents communicate, and this evolves into story. Stories are the best way to communicate ideas. How often do we use analogies in conversation? allot. Analogies are really just stories.
Excellent point on grammer as well. Most people don't even start studying grammer in school until they're already proficient in casual conversation from being with their parents, friends, etc. It's only important after you can converse in the language.
So many people are learning Korean. So cool! I've been struggling with Korean for ages now and found that I've made more breakthroughs since I started pairing deliberate grammar instruction with lots of input. I find that the grammar instruction helps make the input more comprehensible. I lost a lot confidence using input heavy methods - which are super popular these days - and I almost gave up. With a language that has such a radically different grammar structure and doesn't focus so much on the subject, it's kinda hard to just 'pick things up'. Maybe I'm just an idiot and I need things to be spelt out explicitly! Maybe I'm not talented with language, I dunno. But I know that when I was doing research and watching loads of videos like this, finding comments that I could relate to really helped. Still does! For the other learners out there who are like me, before giving up on 'input' try pairing it with grammar instruction. Good luck everyone 😊
P.s. I really like reading stories in Korean. It makes me so much more curious about the language and encourages me to 'get to know it' (which makes grammar so much more interesting to learn). So yeah, read lots! Just don't pit the two against each other.
I really agree with this, especially at the early stages. We are working on the Korean Unconverted course at the moment, and we will be doing exactly that - pairing input with grammar. But I’m not sure Id use the term grammar instruction, more like grammar awareness!
As a fellow Korean learner, I completely agree! While I sometimes come across a couple grammar structures where I can somewhat guess the overall meaning, most are pretty much impossible to understand without knowing them first. Depending on how important the grammar is to the sentence, I can just ignore it, but then I won't understand it any more if I come across it again. So it really helps to study the grammar occasionally, and then see how it's used in context by input.
I learned english very well when i was 12 by watching anime with english subtitles. I used a translator, prior knowledge and guessing. I could later help my sister that's two years older with her english homework at school.
Honestly... Working in Canada and having to read both French and English while I work, has made my French reading comprehension a lot better than if I'd have retried to learn through school... I'm definitely going to give this a go now that I feel like I'm not crazy, and feel actually validated in my way of learning! ❤️❤️❤️
Great point. I will give students a book for home use!
I just wanted to commend on the grammar rules. They need to be learned orally before explained and written down. That way the students get them into the feeling first.
Once when I tought,grade 8 GERMAN, I hung a pair of scissor onto different places, saying in German '' The scissor is hanging on the window, the scissor is hanging on the chalkboard, the scissor is hanging on the doorknob, etc"
Next lesson, when I prompted to tell me where the scissor is hanging, one student said the different locations with the correct preposition and article
I was impressed. In wonder I asked him how he knew to answer by using the correct articles
He responded"I just had it in my feeling"
But in order to satisfy their learning, students should write the rule down after learned orally. It is also a good reference for them to write a story
Wow, Olly, this is a treasure trove! Thanks so much for putting it all into one clear and concise video! I've been learning so much about story learning, and it makes so much sense and is so exciting!
Thanks Sigrid! I’m delighted it was useful.
Whenever I feel discouraged or tired from learning language, your videos are the perfect pick-me-up~ Thank you for the education, inspiration, and consistent quality content
I’ve been consuming a lot of kpop and drama since 2016 and it came to a point where I’m kind of upper beginner with the amount of phrases and vocabs I have obtained as most of them are used a lot and ever since I’ve learnt the alphabet it unlocked so many more possibilities, I never considered this until I saw a TH-cam explaining it and now I’m excited as ever to learn the language properly
Hey Olly! what a great video! I agree with every rule. my favorite is number 3. I've been learning German for 7 months and I didn't study any grammar at all. I just read and listen to the story and enjoy reading your stories. thank you for the great video. you're amazing!
Gratias tibi! I've started focusing more and more on studying Latin now that it's the summer and I have more time available. Thanks so much for the tips!
TL:DR - I endorse many of the rules noted above and encourage this approach (*if it works for you; some people are much more grammar learners, and Fluenz might work better).
During the Pandemic, I took up a lovely language game called Heaven's Vault. While the built-in language has no dictionary (I asked, the developers claim there isn't one) and had truly awful grammar rules, the method of learning the (fake) language is astoundingly effective. It's taught through music, motion, stories, and history; all grammar is learned passively and additional replays add more complex sentence. Then, in a move that was done by others, I started building on the language idea through complex spreadsheets and updating the characters in the script - for many, many months. It was inspiring!
Excellent advice again. I do need to be reminded to FOCUS on the job in hand. Like Olly, I actually like grammar, but there's a time and a place for grammar. Prioritise! *Spanish Uncovered*
Loved the Narnia reference! Thanks, Olly!
One of the things I have done is read stories I already know in English. The Hobbit, Star Wars in Spanish, Harry Potter....
Your English is very easy to understand it’s speed, stressing the right place for easy understanding and no strong unpleasant accent🎉🎉
I live these rules. If make sense. Thanks you for sharing.
I've never ever been able to learn a language that u wanted to learn because I would start and get stuck on learning grammars. Thanks for the video! I'll give it a try again!
I learned this lesson hard with Spanish because I was so focused on grammar yet I listened to Romanian pop music and picked up vocabulary much easier. Same with Polish.
I can loosely understand (spoken) Spanish and can translate (written) Spanish, but I am not fluent because I did not practice speaking as much as I should have.
@charles wheelock listening helped me identify words spoken.
@charles wheelock ok
Hi Ollie, as you I also like grammar but I also try not to focus too much on it because other bits are indeed more important.
However, the new tendency to promote learning mostly based on acquisition implies the risk of us learners sometimes not knowing how to get out of our own existing mental structures.
To illustrate what I mean I will give a real example.
Krashen, yes the expert linguistics mention all the time to say how we should learn languages, has said many times that he loves Spanish.
He has a relatively recent video where he mentions he had lovely memories of speaking Spanish with Steve Kaufmann. At a certain point he starts talking in Spanish and he uses the verbs 'ser' and 'estar' incorrectly more than once. He also indicates that Steve told him that it really doesn't matter, that what it's important is being understood.
Fine, but it happens that even silly things like "ser bueno" y "estar bueno" mean two completely different things for example, and being such pervasive and basic verbs (or verb depending on the language one is speaking) it sounds very awkward to hear it being mistakenly used over and over again, more when that person says to love the language so much.
Acquisition theory would indicate us that it is not a problem and he just needs to keep practising. However, knowing he loves the language so much would you not assume he has had plenty of exposure by now but his brain still hasn't got to acquire that rule naturally anyway?
Would grammar be so unuseful that would not be able to help him there? Not even when by now he has probably hardly fosilized his mistake?
I would say grammar is more helpful when it comes after your learning has already happened and you feel confident enough with your acquired skills, as a way of helping you being self-aware and induce improvements that can take one years (or forever) to rectify when we're not aware of them.
As natives we do exactly that in our own language and it is fine, why should not be fine for second language learners?
Having said this, that self-awareness should not take you to start doubting on your own capabilities to learn, just helping you to idenyify and correct your mistakes faster. Improving your acquisition process.
Many thanks. I was trying story learning, but doing everything wrong (okay, maybe 8 out of 10). I'll try it YOUR way for a month, and see how that works. Thank you!
Let me know how it goes!
Thanks for these great tips and for your books. I'm really enjoying and learning from your Turkish Short Stories.
Thank you for making this video! I'm a teacher and it was really useful for me too!
Thanks for your books, Ive been reading your beginners French stories and finding it very satisfying to be able to work out sentences when I don’t know all the words! I work for a library service and have ordered more copies and some new languages so we can share how great they are with more people :)
Thank you so much Olly! you mean business man! thanks!
Hey Olly, quick question, when introducing the audio whilst reading is it best to listen first to the chapter without the text and then add in the text after?
Thats a good question.
The other thing I keep thinking about is while reading material is easily available in any language especially for beginners, how easy is it to get listening resources for beginners?
I agree with you. You really told what I'm doing since Covid lockdown.
For the reading and listening at the same time, I can’t recommend LingQ enough. I am not big on apps but LingQ is a neat tool to read and listen at the same time while gobbling up new vocab and taking quizzes on old vocab from previous lessons to keep it fresh. It also imports all lesson flash cards to Anki for you. I didn’t like it at first but after understanding language learning more I have come to really appreciate LingQ. It does cost $15 a month but it is worth it if you are really serious about language learning.
Superb content. Notes taken 📝
Thanks so much, Olly! 🙏🏼
Thank you!
Very useful information. Thanks Olly!
I learned Dutch without teacher, just by listening to music, reading the lyrics and singing on my own :-)
In college I sat in a language lab while reading Shakespeare. Listening to the recorded version (LP records back then) while reading made his plays easy to enjoy.
Thank you your videos really helped me learn more languages
Great video - do you recommend reading a book (in the language you're learning) that you've already read in your native language?
Yes, that can definitely help, because your existing understanding of the contents can help you focus on the language itself.
I’m learning Japanese an sov language English is svo and it’s one of the hardest languages to learn for an native English speaker I’ve learned 2 of the writing systems hiragana/ひりがな and katakana/カタカナ and if u don’t know the have a 3rd kanji and u need to know at least 2,000 kanji to be considered fluent in kanji alone using these 3 writing systems is how u write proper Japanese and Japanese is a tonal language as well I’m n5 level rn so a beginner and I find it hard to study so this video definitely helped a lot I have way more motivation. And also u called me out on the grammar part I stress so much I study more grammar than the actual language itself because I feel the grammar is so important but your right I’m only a beginner I shouldn’t even be worrying about grammar at all in the level I’m at.
I have only taught English for 32 years and agree with this idea of activating different areas of the brain to acquire a language. I retired from teaching at university in 2015 and since have edited and co-written about a dozen books in English and Korean in a number of which I appear as a cartoon character. I am wondering about including story segments in our books. I am currently a day away from finishing the editing of a new book in which I figure prominently and will be out by Christmas. Story segments may be too late for that book but there are always more in the pipeline. I think by now there must be about 64 books. We occasionally revise older titles.
Great tips! I might have to find me some Polish children's books to read, haha. I was doing something similar with songs in Polish, I've learned a little bit by listening to their music.
I was thinking of that too! Children's books would be great to learn basic vocabulary and grammar and easily get the jist of the story, especially if you already know the story!
Thanks for your insightful video. Since studying Japanese I've honestly started to look up almost every word I don't recognise, because I won't even know or be sure how to read it correctly otherwise. I'm not sure how to still use StoryLearning effectively while learning Japanese without looking up at least the correct reading of the words i don't know...
Two things: 1) read with audio, so you can hear the pronunciation 2) read at your level so there isn’t too much unknown vocab
@@storylearning Thank you for your fast reply. I'll try finding texts with audio.
I think the story learning approach is cool
I also thought of another thing that I think is a cool idea
I'm in a language learning server on discord and the language I'm learning is Italian
There's a chat room for Italian and I thought, "What if I just read some of the conversations in there"
I feel like this could show what a conversation is like since I want to become conversationally fluent so I feel like that would be a good way to learn
I've been avoiding studying Korean lately. The tips on your channel helped take the pressure off. Thanks so much for that. I'm gonna study tonight :)
Grew up vaguely familiar with German. As a kid, I quickly picked out some of the rules and have been able to translate written German better than speaking it. Fluency may never happen, but I could probably get around easier in Germany than in France (and I’ve had years of French). German makes more sense than French and Spanish.
Thank you from Colombia
Fantastic advice
This was so, SO useful!
Thanks Ollie. Do I really need your story telling package after watching this?
fantastic advice - thanks very much
#1 yess i'm terribly restless but trying to push through and stay consistent in studying
Thanks Olly that was a very interesting and informative video.👍
Number 9 is one of the biggest points for me as I used to read and wouldn't be happy if I didn't learn 5 or 10 phrases from each story. Now I just enjoy the story and make the odd flashcards
What a great discovery!
I love your videos :-) They are so motivating!
Interesting Rules, Thanks olly
Gestures or learning actions helps, when I was learning Spanish I had an excellent teacher who used pictures, speech and gestures to help remember lessons.
Thank you so much 😊
Hey!
I love your videos, and was wondering... What do you think about reading and listening to songs? Singer song writers and easily understandable songs? The lyrics are easy to find and it is quite amusing!
I think this may work for my Icelandic learning enterprise!
Thanks for your work!
I find that looking up some words greatly helps to catch the gist of a text.
Much Love from Canada!
Hi Oly, I'm not sure if you have already done this or not, but could you do a video on tips on combining your story learning method with Lingq?
The examples you give under 'learn the script' are all phonetic. What would you recommend for e.g. Mandarin? Try to learn characters - or read in pinyin?
I was going to write something similar
Did you find out?
read in pinyin
Excellent. I read SAS books by Gerard deVilliers in French. I have learned all kinds of new words....8-)
Thank you 😊
Everything you say is facts 👍👍
aw man, I chronically look words up while reading. I'm looking forward to trying this.
I really really want to know what those mystery words mean. So I look them up.
These are very good tips. I sing in Italian, French, Spanish, and German and my music teacher tells me not to look up words. She asks me what do those words mean in English.
Hey im newn here and i want to tell you i love your all VDO what i hv watched in this one hour...
Hello. do you have some apps that you can learn on the go? and can you make a video with the most used and best for learning other languages?
Thanks Olly good points. I have been reading your Dutch graded reader. It really helps. I understand the plots. Dutch is not the most useful language to learn but it is a place I would like to live. What do you thing about learning more than one language? I have at times accidentally mixed my German with Dutch. even tho am not studying German presently but have done in the past. Has anyone studied multiple languages successfully? I don't mean in a linear order which I am currently doing but together over a course of time. On DuoLingo people are studying more than one. I imagine it would work better if the languages were very different like Mandarin and German rather than say Spanish and French.
#8 is very important!!
One of my biggest problems with traditional learning is leaning grammar really well, and no vocabulary with which to use it.
I’m learning Dutch, just teaching myself and I watched a few of your videos Olly and I though OK, this sounds good. I’ll try to learn Dutch by reading too. Sadly it seems you don’t do a Dutch course. I’ve watched your video on the 5 easiest languages to learn and of course Dutch is the second easiest apparently so maybe this is why?
I’ve just checked and the easiest language to learn is Norwegian and you have a course for that so I’ve answered my own question. :) Any chance you might bring out a Dutch course? Might be too late though, I may have taught myself by then….
This is funny, this is how I learned French, with reading and listening to fairytales. I am surprised by some of these rules though. I love these tips for my next few languages!
Awdome advice. Very true
Very inspiring...video.
I agree with your list. If there was one thing I wish language learners understood, it is this:
A child takes between five and seven years to become conversational. If you've only been dedicated to learning a second language for seven years, accept and understand that, to native speakers, you probably are at about the level of a seven year old in terms of amount of vocabulary you command and grammatical structure you use. Children are immersed pretty much every minute of every day, and it still takes that long. We can reactivate our natural learning power by remembering that the most basic learning technique is to listen and imitate constantly.
I LOVE studying grammar so that tip is hard but I'll try harder!
I've heard Olly say the same 2 rules a few times in different videos.. First, read at your level (70% comprehension) and second, no translations. But where do I start? I can't read anything at 70% comprehension in my target language on day 1, so I feel like I've missed what happens prior to picking up your first story.
Interested in how others manage from day 1.
Great question. You need to start with beginner level material for a few weeks, to learn the basics. You can do this with textbooks, and I also make my Uncovered courses to help complete beginners get started with the method.
Sir your accent flowing in my mind
Hi mate ,great video. I'm considering learning few languages this year , could you tell me what's the better way :
Learn 3 different languages in the same time or do it one by one? . Thanks
One at a time. You’ll go deeper and learn faster.
Brilliant!
But Ollie; about grammar in Spanish for example, I am stuck right now in the mid-intermediate level of expressing the past. AR, ER and irregular verbs. Right now I have compiled a list and I keep going over them in the hope that I will be able to recall the right tense when engaged in a conversation.
great tips
I absolutely agree to study daily. Slow and steady win the race.
Hi, this is Lee Sohlden.
You are on the right track with story learning -but you can do it way faster. Tune your ear in fully before learning any words, then use passive listening to the story to boost the absorbtion pace.
You can learn an entire language, in practically no time -knowing it all by ear, and by reading.
Looking up words should not be an issue, as all definitions should be there for you, as you are listening to and reading the story.
It goes like this: Begin looping the story you want to learn. Completely ignore it. Go about your normal day.
After a week of this, begin doing an hour per day of ear tuning exercises, which I invented. You continue, always, to keep looping that story. Initially, this is to help your ear go native -along with doing the ear tuning exercises; but later it will also multiply your absorbtion rate of the meaning of the story.
Third week you begin switching your time on doing ear tuning exercises to word associations. Over time, the ear tuning exercises are just 40 minutes per week, the rest on word associations.
I call my system for associating target language words to known words "read thrus". Depending on your level, you read a sentence, maybe just a phrase, maybe a paragraph -maybe the whole story; to see how well you understand the words. Lets assume you are kinda new, and are working with one sentence at a time. So, you read the sentence, but understood little. So look over the provided notes (or listen to an audio of me explaining the story -which by the way, you can also do mostly passively if you choose -works for those on an absolute zero time budget) for that sentence. The notes will be pretty basic -what each word means, what the overall sentence means, telling you what particular phrases mean. For those ready for it, more grammar, pertaining to that sentence, is there just below; but you are told to keep the majority of your time listening to and reading the story -so do no more than toy a bit with the grammar.
After looking over the notes (or listening to some of my video) read that sentence three times while listening to the audiobook. (the audiobook spoken by a native speaker, not the one I did explaining the audiobook to you.) Next, close your eyes and listen to the sentence three more times
Repeat all of the above paragraph, if you wish, two more times; but then for sure move on to the next sentence. Do not think of this as studying. No need to actually learn one single thing today. Just think of the read thrus as input for your speech center. Over night, your speech center will put stuff together, and will gift you with some of the language.
None of my program aims at your conscious mind, so, relax, just let the language soak in.
Do this daily. Always spend half your time moving forward to new material, and half your time doing read thrus for previous material. When you know something perfectly -still keep it in the rotation -what you can hear and understand perfectly is the best form of comprehensible input; which will automatically cause you to speak the language.
Your absorbtion rate will continually accelerate. Pretty soon you will absorb material in one hour chunks just by reading it one time after briefly looking over the notes for the story. Then it gets better; you can absorb an hour at a time just by ear alone, after glancing at the notes briefly. Then it gets better - just listening to the language cold, you know the story. Maybe you did not know a word here and there, but you know the story.
PS -by far the biggest factor in the degree of acceleration of absorbtion of the language, between one student and the next -is if they did not skimp on how much ear tuning exercises they did. A native ear is the biggest key to this system working as effectively as possible. While read thrus, combined with continued passive listening, will slowly improve the ear -ear tuning exercises outdo this 20 to 1.
watch my video -says the same thing. There are links to my other videos where I help with 18 different languages which I am learning myself. This is all free, its just a hobby for me.
th-cam.com/video/aJIILxwIkL4/w-d-xo.html
I like to make a 25 word and 3 phrase list for every book. I search for the words and i start reading. before i read i read over the list and sometimes after. That way i learn and spend time with the language. If a book takes a month to finish i’ve had a month to know the list as well as other sources of learning
Please add a course for NOrsk!
If you watch a film you can put the subtitles in the language you're learning. For example, put Greek titles on a Greek film. So you are reading and listening together.
Thanks for all the advice. What is your view on looking up words in a dictionary after reading. Never do it? Sometimes? Also do you have advice on good novels for differing language levels once people have read your short stories? Thanks!
TBH, if a word is coming up a lot and you still don't know what it means from context, just look it up and add it to your review materials if it seems useful. Years later, I still remember Verteidigungsminister even though I didn't waste any real time learning it. I don't think I even bothered reviewing or adding it to my study materials, it just stuck.
Personally, I'd just look up the ones tray come up a lot or that I'm particularly curious about. The further you go, the more words you should be able to pick up from context.
Ideally, don't use a translation dictionary if you can help it. But feel free to look up the words in the foreign language only dictionary in a translation dictionary if you have to.
Hi Olly ! I have just bought your book "Short stories in English for intermediate learners". I would like to know how to use it in the most effective way. Thank you in advance for answering me. Bertrand from France.