How To Learn a Language Like a Polyglot

1. Welcome!: Do you want to learn a new language but don't know where to begin. Let me be your guide on this course. My name is r Zeta and I'm a polyglot and language instructor. I had majored in languages and cultures in my bachelor's degree, and I have a master's degree in international relations. So I know how learning a language can w2 career future opportunities and change your life in many beautiful ways. I have done more than 300 language lessons to students from different backgrounds and learn a language is myself. I can speak four languages fluently and four on the beginner to intermediate level. This class is designed for anyone who wants to start learning any new language of your choice. You don't need any prior experience or any special talent or superpower. All you need is just an open-mind and curiosity. There's so many videos and courses out there on the Internet that tells you all of these different tips on how to learn a language in two weeks or a monk. In this course, I won't sugarcoat any of the language learning processes. I will teach you how to look at learning languages from different perspectives and techniques that worked for me. After attending this course, you will learn how to turn language learning into a habit. How to use input and output, how to apply different study methods and why learning certain parts of the language are important. You will also learn more about the emotional process of learning a language. How did not compare ourselves with other people? How to make it fun, and how to stay motivated. Lastly, you will find a very strong reasoning why you're learning this language. At the end of the course, you should also know different techniques and approaches to learning a language, which should help you to choose what works best for you. The class will include a wide variety of simple and quick exercises that will help you to find your way in new language learning journey. Your class project will be to keep track of your everyday process of learning a language for seven consecutive days in a row. Doing this for seven days in a row, we'll get you into a habit of learning a language and tracking your progress. It's easy to get excited for a few days and then get behind. I highly recommend doing this. I love this check proverb. You live a new life for every new language you speak. Only one language. You live only once. Learning any new language opens up a magical gate to a whole new culture. For learning a new culture, you discover many things that you didn't know about yourself and the culture that you grew up in. Let's take that first baby step and dive into this tremendous sea of opportunities together. 2. Find Your "Why": In this lesson and the upcoming ones who will do the pre preparation of learning a new language. There's a few steps. Met them. I will look very simple, but could help you to start your engine and take that first step when starting to learn a new language. So let's dive in. I love this quote by Nietzsche which says, he, who has a why to lift four can bear almost anyhow. I noticed that every time I tried to learn a new language and then not have a clear reason why the process wouldn't go very far. It is important to understand the why of learning the language value chose to learn just like a character in the movie, but it has motivation behind doing certain things. So will you have to have a clear understanding why you chose to do it? If there is no end goal than losing motivation will be very easy. And then the next thing you know, you haven't done it for a week or two because there are no stakes involved, then you'll have to start from scratch again. That means if you skip a week or two, nothing in your life will change because of that. But the language learning process will stop down. So it is very important to know why you're learning it. E.g. I. Chose to learn Japanese because number one, I want it to go and study. I'm living in Japan and I was a very clear goal that I had. So I knew that I have to have what it takes to live there without cheating and using English along the way too. I wanted to connect with the local people and understand their cultural better. And then three, I wanted to have strong conversational skills to converse with native speakers. Your reason may be learning a certain language for work. Then depending on your work, the vocabulary and things you will learn will defer. It may be for traveling, for studying, for business, for watching Korean dramas without subtitles. So it is essential to Novus. At the same time, you have to define what fluency means to you when you watch videos that tell that person learn to speak it fluently in two weeks? Well, that's not really 100% true. Semester and language you need more time. But for those certain people, basic phrases, conversational skills, vocabulary is what they wanted to learn in those two weeks. So define what fluency is to you. Doesn't mean having long conversations with native speakers. Doesn't mean just knowing the basic phrases. Or does it mean being able to read and understand all the detailed nuances of the language and almost reached the level of a native speaker. You know what you want to achieve, it will be easier to study. However, at the same time, it is important to take one step at a time and not to overwhelm yourself. Try to set an attainable goal, or maybe even split it into tiny mini goals from the smallest to the biggest. One exercise. But we will dive into right away is defining the why of learning a particular language. District won't give me an answer to what will keep you going and not giving up. The first exercise here is to download the exercise sheet and to look at it and to fill in your Y. I am learning blank language of your choice because of a reason, can be multiple reasons named here. Then you'll define fluency. What is fluency to you? And there are many things. Being able to have a conversation, to travel freely, anything you want, then you will write down your ultimate goal. Okay? You can split it into many goals to, and after you do is, you will have a more clear idea of what you want out of this language learning process. You can here try to think what language skills will be required to achieve your goal. E.g. if your goal is to communicate freely in daily conversation than the skills that you will need to focus on the most might be listening, speaking way more than reading and writing. Think about this and let's move on to the next chapter. 3. Building a Habit: Welcome to Chapter two, habit formation. I like looking at language learning as any other habit building. When you start to create a new habit, sometimes it may be hard to fit it into a routine or schedule that you already have, alright, and to keep doing it until it becomes a habit. So I love using advice given by James Clear in his book Atomic Habits. So some of the advice from the book I will apply for language learning in this lesson. Let's imagine an example here. Let's say I want to start roller skating. However, I have to wake up early, brush my teeth, taking a shower, go to work like all of us in the morning. And then they have to commute all the way back, cook dinner, and perhaps every overnight, I have a yoga class or a hockey, soccer activity, whatever you do. How do I now put roller skating in the middle of my usual routine? Well, as we have discussed in the previous lesson first, I have to have a clear reason why I'm doing this. Don't want to be healthier and exercise more. Do I want to do is for my mental health because this makes me happy, puts me in a better mood and I'm nicer to be around. The second thing I like to do is sending a precise time and location where I'm going to do it. And before bed, it is important to assess yourself and think about how much time can you spend studying this language realistically is a 20 min each day or 30 min maybe it's 30 min on workdays, but an hour on Saturday and Sunday. Let's take a look here at this example. I will rollerskate, that's 06:00 P.M. in the local neighborhood park for an hour. Now you can try to do this, but an example of any language of your choice. I will study language of your choice at a certain time, in a certain place. For a certain amount of time. It may seem very easy and silly, but this does help to commit to actually doing it. Just like you have to meet your friend at a certain time and location to make it work. You also have to do the same thing with your activity if you want to turn it into a habit. When we don't set a specific time, it feels like the action is not a part of today. Maybe it will happen tomorrow. Maybe it will happen the day after. Having a set time really helps because there are so many distractions that might pull you away from doing it. A phone call, a message, social media. So this exercise is located in the files attached to the scores. I'm just try to do it. Another thing I like to do is to make it easy to notice crystal-clear right in front of my eyes. So let's say I would buy some rollerskates, put them in the most obvious place in the house, somewhere, but I wouldn't notice them all the time. Even if it's a very silly location, like the middle of my living room. I have done this before. What a yoga mat. I would just leave it in the middle of the room. It will be so hard not to notice and quite annoying to look at it. So I would just do it and I wouldn't forget it because it was so obvious for language learning. You can put your language learning materials all over the house. So it would be hard to forget. You can play sticky notes, memo cards, and different items in the house. You can also place books everywhere, stuff around the house where it is easy to see, notebooks where you hang out the most often, books, sticky notes, memo cards. You can also even design an environment where you would like to study. The next step is making it very easy to execute. The least effort requires, the more likely it is that you will do it. If the sticky notes with vocabulary words are everywhere around your house, it is so easy to notice them and will take you less effort to study the language. You can also pair it with some type of a sacred ritual that would get you into the zone of studying. E.g. a cup of coffee or a cup of tea, nicely lit candle, a quiet room where you can focus. You can even create a space that would make you want to study. You can decorate it. You can also use notebooks are journals that are attractive to you that could increase the pleasure of using it. And therefore, studying these small things can affect that every, The very first step, sitting down to study, when you're more advanced, you can also mix it up with the habits you already have. E.g. if you do like yoga, you could try yoga classes on YouTube in your target language. If you'd like roller skating, you can listen to music or podcasts in that certain language as well. It becomes even more fun to do it. And lastly, trying to set a little reward for yourself after each time that you study. Study is a process that does not necessarily mean that you will see results instantaneously. It might take months or sometimes even years. But that doesn't mean that they won't come. You just might get the reward of becoming fluent alone later. As human beings, we tend to like instant rewards, right? And in this situation, you could create rewards for yourself. It can be visual rewards or something you can touch. Visual rewards could be a streak that you could start on your calendar like a line but continues and you don't want to break the streak so you'll keep doing it. It could also be a pebble that you put into a glass every time you study and seeing it getting for my car satisfaction. It can also be a physical reward like a little sweet or something like that. I like those the most. But don't get obsessed with the angle. Keep taking little baby steps and going forward. 4. Researching: Welcome to Chapter three, researching your target language. Do some research on the language you're going to learn first. Again, this might sound very obvious and you might want to skip this part, but it's a very important part of the learning process, at least for me. You will all have different languages, but you're going to learn depending on the language you will choose. Some of them will be more similar to your native language. Let's say if your mother tongue is English, learning Spanish will be easier than learning Japanese or Korean. Because of the grammar differences in the way the sentence structure works, because of all of these things. The following questions might come in handy. E.g. what is the writing system like? How many alphabets are there? Because some languages actually have a few, like Japanese. How many characters do I have to learn? If, let's say if I'm learning Mandarin, how is the pronunciation? So knowing some basic information about the language you're going to learn can also help to prepare yourself mentally. You won't feel so overwhelmed. There won't be as many surprises along the way. So it's really, really helpful. But don't overdo it though. People tend to over research and reading and getting lost in the process. It feels as if you are in motion, but in fact, no language progress is happening. You're just consuming all of this information and that's it. So just know the basics of how the language functions, how many words or characters are there. And this will help you to set your expectations, right? If we don't do the research than some things might come up as a surprise and we might get discouraged. E.g. before he started learning Japanese, you might hear people say that you will learn. Here I can uncouple Canada. They're alphabets within a day or two. While this may be a right, everyone speed is different. Maybe it will take you a day or two. But some people don't talk about that. There are characters that are very similar and they can cause confusion. You may learn them really fast. But some things might come up as a surprise. Because after you learn here not going on Kappa Canada, you might get very excited. But however, there's still 1,500 characters called kanji that you will have to learn. And each of them will have one to five different readings you'll have to memorize. So just do a little bit of research to know more and have clear expectations. 5. Resources: Welcome to Chapter four, resources. So many polyglots and language learners have different approaches towards this. I tend to believe in choosing one or two main resources and sticking to them. Again, if you keep jumping from one resource to another, you will feel as if you're in motion, but no language learning will happen and it might feel a little unfocused. I recommend sticking to one single resource. I prefer to use a book rather than an app. Being on my phone causes too many distractions. And also believed that apps can teach you a few words, but there won't be any structure or good explanations or grammar or situational dialogues. However, it might work for you. And if it's working, keep going. Where to begin. Then beginning, it is really important to start a notebook or a virtual file, whatever you prefer to track all the things that you are learning. I prefer writing my hand because that just makes them memorizing process easier and more efficient. However, if writing information down on your laptop is better for you, go for it. Anything is encouraged, as long as you have a systematic way of keeping track of your notes and everything you learn. It is important because you can always go back and review it. You could also use separate notebooks for vocabulary and grammar. You can mark it chapter with different colors of Port Markers inside. So it would be easier to find certain things you're looking for. Making flashcards is another way of studying the language. I think that making flashcards is essential. Here everyone has their own preferences. Some people like to victim very neatly and make them pop with color. Some people make them in a very simple way. Again, whatever you prefer. I like to start using flashcards from the moment I started learning the alphabet, I write down every letter or character separately, and then the way it's pronounced on the other side. You can also add photos of the item on the flashcard to associated to the word whatever works. If you don't like to make flashcards by hand, you could try flashcard apps such as Anki, but makes sure not to get too distracted. Personally, I don't use apps because I get too distracted. The next step is finding a good dictionary. Finding a good dictionary is essential. It is important to have a source file would be comfortable to use an accurate when finding the meaning a dictionary. You can also give you an opportunity to look up word conjugations or stroke order if you're learning japanese or Mandarin. For Japanese, I love to use judicial.org. I have been using it for around eight years and it has never disappointed me. The morphing well, I'd like to do is getting creative with studying. Because it's very fun. You can try to find quirky ways to study. E.g. I love putting vocabulary or phrases that I have trouble memorizing on my phone screen. So every time I pick up my phone, I see it. So it's very hard not to memorize it when it's always there. Sticky notes around the house on different items can also be useful resource. Finally, it is very useful to use some source of repetition of what you have learned. Some people use apps. Again, like on key for dad. I use my notebook and go through all the notes again and again and again. Sometimes I like to get a new notebook and just rewrite all the information that I had in my old notebook is just the way that I memorize things. So find the way that works for you. How do you usually study? Do you write things down? Do you read them out loud? Find your way. If you don't know your way yet, it's okay. But try and experiment and try to find your way for trying out different things. 6. Everyday Use and Study Plan: Welcome to chapter five. This is the last chapter of our pre preparation of learning a language. And in this lesson we will learn about everyday use and study plan. So the so-called secret to sending a language is consistency. We could study really hard for two days a week, but do nothing for the remaining five and we probably wouldn't get very far. The information will go to our short-term memory without being repeated. So it is the key to keep doing a little bit of something every day to learn the language. If you learn new vocabulary on Monday, keep using it throughout the week. Ideally, tried to learn a few new words every day. Repetition is the key to not get lost in this language learning process. A study plan could be a big help, but I won't be teaching you a detailed way on how to make one. However, I could give you a few tips on what to focus on. So let's take a look at our short-term and long-term goals. E.g. or a short-term goal is to finish an integrated course and elementary Japanese one book or any language book. And our long-term goal would be to speak fluently or freely with Japanese people when you move there. Secondly, let's take a look at how much time we can spend the holistically on learning the language every day. Let's say it's 30 min, seven days a week. So that would be 3.5 focused hours a week. Great. If you're a very detailed oriented person, you could also take a look at how much time you could spend for learning each aspect of the language, grammar, vocabulary, speaking, and etc. Then put that into your schedule. Again, if you're a detailed oriented person, you could set an estimate of how much time would it take you to learn one chapter. That means to memorize all the new vocabulary, grammar to practice dialogue, writing, and to do all the exercises. I personally don't really do that, but if you're a detail oriented person, you could try. I just said, a challenging when possible, short-term goal and then try to set an end date. Sense of urgency might help to be more dedicated and structure towards achieving the goal that are key to this learning process is to always summarize what you have learned and to review it. When you have downtime, you could try to study it passively by watching something or listening something. Make this your new identity. Identity as a language learner. You are a language learner now. So after the first month or so you can ask yourself these few questions. Do you feel that you made any progress? And why? What would you change in your study plan? And how do you think you should do less or more for your language learning process? 7. Alphabet: So in this lesson and the upcoming ones, we will dive into the actual language learning. So let's start off with the alphabet. Why is learning the alphabet important? This section may be very obvious. However, there are people who skip learning the alphabet and just try to wing it. Or they just tried to learn the basic phrases and it's fine. Everyone has their own method and I really respect that. However, I strongly believe that the alphabet is the main source of knowledge when starting to learn a new language. It teaches you the correct pronunciation, how to read and write. And when you write, you tend to memorize things better, right? So without knowledge of an alphabet, we're not really capable of building or learning words in the correct way. So I recommend using a notebook that we already talked about. When you'll learn how to write and writing it by hand. You can use special apps if you want to, that's okay. But again, phones can lead to many distractions, so be careful about using them. And you can also read the letters out loud and try to pronounce them. This will improve your pronunciation skills. You'll be practicing two things at once. If you're learning Korean, learning hunger will be one of the first steps you'll take. If you're learning japanese, you'll learn here. And if you know the alphabet really well, learning new words will be way easier. If you're learning Mandarin or any other tonal language. Tones will be one of the first things you will learn, e.g. Mandarin, Chinese, Cantonese, Vietnamese. So pay attention to that and do some research on the topic. 8. Numbers: So this next chapter will be all about learning numbers. So what will it provide us with? Learning numbers is one of the first things I like to do when I learn a language. I think they are very useful for conversational skills because you can use them to tell the time you're age, ask for the price, set a time to meet, and many more things. So depending on the language that you'll learn, there might be some exceptions. E.g. the way we see some numbers in Japanese, when we tell the price may be different when we tell our age. And there can be also count towards added for counting different types of objects when you're studying Mandarin, Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. But it's still very essential to know the basic numbers. So learn some basic numbers and they might take you very far in the beginning if you haven't already tried to take on a challenge. And after watching this lesson, try to learn to count 1-100 in your target language. And then you can try to look up how to tell your age and time, see if it comes in handy. 9. Input vs Output: In this next chapter, we will learn about input versus output and how to practice it. So language learning, it can be divided into output and input based learning. So let's start with input. Input learning includes receiving the information such as listening or reading. It's what we put into our brains. You could be listening to your teachers providing you the information in your target language. You could be listening to online courses, podcasts, movies, reading books, pamphlets, or the news. This will be a part of input learning. Now, output, on the other hand, is based on what you produce as a learner. Output includes speaking and writing. So I'd like to discuss the importance of input. As beginner learners, we often want to jump into the output straight away. We went to start speaking and interacting with people. It's a great urge to have, I'm one of those people too. However, input is really important in the beginning stages of learning, as well as later on. If we start speaking without learning basic pronunciation, sentence structure, some grammar, we might develop bad habits. And bad habits such as wrong pronunciation or sentences but do not make much sense can cause confusion. So while it is important to get out there and practice, don't forget to get a little bit of input before you practice output. Bad happens can be very hard to break later on, and we don't want to spend our time breaking them when we could be learning other new things in our language. So having a good input and output, the balance will prevent that from the very beginning. Now, how do we practice this input? Let's start off with listening. First of all, let's make sure that the input is appropriate for our level. Let's find something engaging and understandable. We might want to listen to difficult native level podcasts and watch 90 minute limb movies. But it might be a little out of our league if we're just beginner learners. So let's start off with baby steps. Listening to simple information given to us. Let's find some easily understandable movies, perhaps animation or content or oriented towards children. Explanations may be very clear and slow paced and those types of content. You can also listen to songs that are catchy and easy to memorize. Songs may help you to learn words, but the sentence structure used in them maybe different from the way the spoken language works. So be cautious of this. Podcast are also a good idea. So once you level increases, you can watch more difficult content. You can watch it with subtitles of your target language or your mother tongue, whichever you prefer. However, studies show that watching shows and your target language and having the subtitles in the target language as well helps to improve your language learning way faster. So once you're a little more advanced, you can watch things with subtitles. There are specific websites for language learning that simplified the difficult texts. E.g. if you're learning japanese, that NHK news has a website that writes the news and the more simplified way than their actual news, weekly news and Japanese. So lookup resources when my work for your target language, because there might be websites like that for you. Another thing you could do is follow some social media accounts about something you like in your target language, which might come in handy, but be careful about those distractions I was telling you about. So now regarding output or what you produce and release into the world while using your target language. These skills will be speaking and writing. So let's take a look at speaking. You can practice speaking with your teacher. If you have one. You can also practice speaking with native speakers. So also if you have access to it, you can try language exchange, which I really liked because you can help other people learn your language while the correct your target languages skills. If you do not have access to it, It's okay. You can try to find a teacher online on different platforms such as I talk you were playing or pre-play. You can also try speaking in that language by herself. My sounds silly, but it's not ideal, but it does help for practicing your writing. You can start a journal entry and to write simple journal entries about your day, where you went for. Did you eat when you woke up, how you feel writing a short line every day, this should help you improve, especially if you do it day by day consistently. You can also find a pen pal buddy when a person from the country that speaks your language and exchanged letters with them, it's really, really fun. Now lastly, you can also try to transcribe what you hear in a video or a song, but only if it's not too difficult for you. And a little exercise here for you. Try the journal in your target language about today. Even if it's one sentence, It's okay. It's just small baby steps. And if you want and you can share it with us. So let's go. 10. Grammar and Sentence Structure: This next chapter will be about adding grammar and sentence structure. Grammar may seem overwhelming and quite dense and complicated at times. When the word grammar comes to mind, we probably mean, imagine a variety of different rules and exceptions and gets crazy. Well, it's true grammar can be bad, but it can also be a tool to discover a new way of thinking. A new grammar that works differently from that affirm over tongue can open a window to a completely different culture and system. It makes our brain exercise more as well. So let's take a more positive approach towards, and grammar will be the basis of our spoken and written language. It will be a tool that will help us to convey messages and the logical manner. And it will also help us to communicate when you start learning your target language. First of all, look at the sentence structure, or as we call it syntax, which is also part of grammar, is syntax, subject, verb, object, like an English and Mandarin. So let's take an example. I go to the park. I is the subject verb is go and the object is the park. Or maybe it is SOV, subject, object verb, like in Japanese or Korean, where you would say, I park go, the verb would go at the very end of the sentence, which makes it a little tricky. So syntax or sentence structure makes her sentences some natural and flow and it helps us to be understood by native speakers. So check this out before you start putting nouns and verbs together in the sentence. 11. Different Techniques and Methods: Our next chapter is about learning different techniques to study the language. In this lesson, I will present a variety of different study methods that could be used for language and learning. You can try to pick and choose things that will resonate with you. So the first thing that I will present will be the Pareto Principle or 2080 rule, which states that 20 per cent of your actions will give you 80 per cent of results than the secret to becoming really successful when using this method is to find your special 20 per cent. This differs from person to person. You could learn the list of most frequently used words for your language. I don't believe that learning all of the most common words in the language will give you 80% some results. Because you still need to put grammar together and sentences together to make sense which you're trying to say. But it's up to each individual. For some people, it does work very well. So you could try that. We can also look at Pareto principle in a way, what if we have a good pre preparation that we talked about? Then also a systematic schedule which would be 20%. Those little things could define our 80 per cent of results because we would continuously study without stopping and starting all over again. The next one is the loci or lossy method and losi method is also known as a memory journey or memory palace method. Desmond, first mentioned by Cicero, ancient Greek and Roman orators have used it to memorize speeches, which is amazing. It comes from ancient times. This technique is ancient and I personally love to use this. I use this the most. You can use this technique to remember facts, names, numbers, or words. And it's a memorization technique that works along with visualization and associations. So the first thing you do, you close your eyes and imagine a familiar physical space. It can be one of your rooms in your house, can be a park, you school. And then you add a mental image of the thing you want to remember. So you can visualize different rooms and how you would walk for that space following a specific route. And then the things you want to remember, you place into specific locations in that room or in that location. So you can imagine those things you have to remember also in the funny or crazy way, e.g. if you walk through your room in your imagination and you want to memorize the word for, I don't know, ice cream. Maybe you imagine it in a very fun You are crazy way where it's put in your shoe. Okay? So once you have memorized that and you have placed everything in the house, the palace is complete. Then you want to remember the things you just have to imagine walking through those familiar rooms again and again and seeing the objects. When I use this technique, I skipped the rooms and the whole palace itself. I switch it up and instead of that, I just find funny associations or rhymes or images. The next method is called the emersion method. This is one of my favorite methods as well because it feels most natural to me. And it's actual and ideal way to improve your language skills. It's a situation when you live where the language is spoken or you are in the community surrounded by the language. However, this is definitely not 100% result about your skills will improve if you're in a place of emotion. There are many people who live in the country that speak a certain language, but they don't learn to speak it at all. So it's not a guarantee. But if you have motivation, you can make it work no matter where you are. You can use technology tumors yourself and listening to the language or connecting with speakers of that language. You can also find people living in your city who speak that language. I come from a small country called Lithuania. We speak Lithuanian there. And when I started learning Japanese, I would try to meet Japanese people living there. And it's not very common. I tried to practice with them. Or if they would need a place to stay, I would offer my own room and my parents house so they could stay there. So I would help them get around and get to know my culture and an exchange. I got to immerse myself in Japanese language. There is always a way for learning in context. It has also been scientifically proven that learning vocabulary in context is way easier for your brain to make associations and connections with, to memorize the information. I have tried this one and is really easier to memorize it like that. Learning new words and a contextual situation instead of vocabulary list of random words in the book, we'll be way more helpful learning a full phrase instead of just one word, learning award but comes up in a conversation with similar words instead of just learning and individual work will be very helpful if you learn in this way, even though you won't be able to understand 100% of what someone is saying. You might get the gist of it, which is a very important, I haven't mentioned all the possible methods, just some of them. While all of those methods or grade, please don't try to overdo it and stress out. Just do your best. Focused on your well-being and balance in life and everything else will follow. As people say, Rome wasn't built in a day. And many people have expectations that they will become fluent in two weeks. Again, I believe this is a misconception. People want to be rewarded instantly by what learning languages, often the accumulation of knowledge and the results of spending many hours working on the language they come later in the journey. Therefore, it is not instantly rewarded. The reward comes in the future. So be willing to wait for those rewards. 12. Stay Motivated and Be Kind to Yourself: In this lesson and the upcoming ones, we'll take a look at how to stay motivated and be kind to ourselves during this learning process. So the first thing you could do, you could try to join a language group. So what can often keep us going is having a buddy or a group of people who do the same activity as we do. If your friends are into this, this is great. That means you can motivate each other, Hangout and use the target language together. You'll keep each other going. And if one of you gets discouraged, the other one can help you get back up and vice versa. However, sometimes our friends are not enter the same things as we are. And in this case then I highly recommend to find a community would be into the particular language learning. It could be a language exchange club, aesthetic lobe, or a cultural club. This will definitely make the process more fun, motivating, and exciting. When I learned Japanese, I tried to go to Japanese cultural club in my city where I could meet like-minded people. So these were people who were interested in Japanese culture and language. And sometimes Japanese people themselves who lived in my country and they will join and then we could talk in the language and exchange different things. So in this way, we could also practice our Japanese and have some pizza while doing it. If you join a language exchange group, you can help someone who wants to study your native language. And then maybe if there's anyone who speaks your target language, they could help you with it. You could practice it. And you can also share the hardships and difficulties that you face along the way, which can also help in the process. Having someone who understands will ease the process for you. However, if there is no opportunity like this where you live, it's also a K because in this day and age you can join online Facebook groups, blogs, or worst-case scenario, but classes online with a native speaker. Having a chance to join a community or meet like-minded people will motivate you. You will get more encouraged. And maybe you'll also feel like you're in a safe place to practice the language, which is a very good thing when you're just a beginner. Another aspect that might help you to stay motivated and learn even faster. It could be learning about the culture of your target language. Let's think of a language as a living, breathing organism. We use it to communicate with other people from different parts of the world. With people that come from different cultures. You're not just saying words, you're not just using them. You're trying to communicate with another human being who has a different background to that of where you come from. So knowing the history, manners, eating habits, social norms might help you to communicate whatever it is that you want to say to the person in a way that will be respectful and understood in the correct way. So I love learning the culture when I learned that language, let's imagine you go to Japan and you go out to eat with someone for the first time. The way it is done, if you know the cultural aspects, will be very helpful in communicating. E.g. sitting down in a certain order around the table. Phrases that are said before and after the meal, the order in which people ordered the food, all the seeing is the etiquette and manners of interacting during the dinner can convey way more than words. So whatever language it is that you're learning, it can be very helpful if you learn about the culture simultaneously. If you'll learn more about the culture, sometimes the things, the wave, certain things in the language, might just make more sense to you. E.g. sentence structure, greetings, adjectives, certain expressions might be translated into English or your native language in a certain way. But in your target language, they might have a certain undertone, something left unsaid or sit in between the lines. So when you know the culture, it is more likely that you'll know the nuances, you'll know the underlying tones, I strongly believe and knowing the culture might even boost your language learning process. I highly recommend looking into that. I like this phrase which says that comparison is the thief of joy. And this is regarding many people out there on the Internet giving advice regarding learning languages. I guess this includes me. But as I noticed over the years, it can be both a good and a bad experience. Sometimes it can be very inspiring and motivating to move forward because you want to reach that level of fluency. But oftentimes made me our progress is not the same as someone's who says that they learned Spanish and under two weeks. And then we tend to get frustrated, discouraged by comparing ourselves with those people who did learn the language and less than two weeks. So it is very important to be realistic and then to understand that during the process you will just try to be the best version of yourself. So this language learning, be it Korean, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin, or Japanese, is your journey. So that person that you're watching on YouTube or Instagram has their own path. While others can inspire us, we should try not to compare ourselves. Let's try to focus on strengthening ourselves and our language skills. Because this is the most important part. So don't worry about who's behind or having their view. After all, it's a marathon, not a sprint. You could incorporate learning while doing those activities that you enjoy. E.g. when you're a beginner, you could put sticky notes near where you cook or even make a dish related to the region that speaks your target language. When you're more advanced, you can look up the recipes themselves in your target language. Or you could listen to songs or podcasts while exercising. If you'd like yoga, could watch the yoga videos themselves in the target language. So there are many ways to make it fun and work for you. Just think about the things that you already enjoy and try to incorporate language learning into them. 13. Wabi-Sabi and Kaizen Approaches: In this chapter, we will learn to Japanese why we savvy and Kaizen approaches and how we can apply them to learning languages. Even though I'll be savvy is often used to talk about Japanese aesthetics, design, and style. It can also be defined as a worldview. While we solve, it, looks at the world as being perfectly imperfect and in a constant state of change. His book, why be savvy simple, Richard Powell, statesmen, lobby sobbing, nurtures free, simple realities. Nothing lasts, nothing is finished and nothing is perfect. We can look at the language learning process for the lens of yB sapling, learning is a process that is endless. Even if you become fluent, there will always be worst and aspects of the language that will still be new to you. Even native speakers themselves sometimes don't know all the meetings to all the world words in the language. So nothing is perfect and we don't have to expect perfection from ourselves. We don't have to be perfect and never make mistakes. This is not realistic. And this is a very high standard, but can end up stressing us out more than helping. I tend to deal with this quite a lot. We will probably just quit learning due to the pressure that we place on ourselves. So let's not do that. Look at yourself for a YB savvy lens. You are not perfect. And that is okay. Nature is not perfect, but we still gaze and all when we look at how beautiful it is. So be proud of the fact that you put in the effort without straining yourself and expecting perfection. I wanted to clarify here that this does not mean not having goals or aims. It means doing your best without punishing yourself if you don't meet the expectations of what is perfect. This is a nice transition to a number of Japanese concept that I want to introduce to you. Sculpt Kaizen and consists of two characters stored Kaizen, the first one means change or to modify, and the second one means good or virtuous. Together, it can mean change for the better. It is actually a Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement of change for the better. And many of its aspects are often applied in the business sector. But the core concept can be applied to language learning as well, which I will do now. Cons of this approach is that this continuous improvement is based on small positive changes that happen every day. And these small changes you make will result in significant results and improvements in the future. When learning a language, we don't have to binge on learning for two days nonstop. It is actually better to do a little bit each day. Each day. Small baby steps. That's the fame of our course. So if you learn five new words every day, in 30 days, it will end up to be 150 new words. That's a significant amount. You can try to take a challenge after watching this lesson and learn five new words each day. See how much you can improve it. Implementing a small action every single day. And try not to break the streak. 14. Last Few Words!: If you've got this far, congratulations and thank you for watching this course. I hope you enjoyed it and that it was useful for you and in your language learning journey. Language learning is a journey, as I have already mentioned, it's a marathon, not a sprint. So it does take time, ticking little baby steps every day towards learning a new language is, in a way, creating a new human understands people from different places, bet. You. That doesn't judge, but appreciate the differences in the language structure that might be unfamiliar to you. You but doesn't necessarily need to get instant results because you know that your future self will thank you for all the hard work you put in the learning process. As Japanese philosophy yB Sabi has taught us, don't forget to be kind to yourself during this language learning journey or whatever you're learning. You don't have to be perfect or learn everything like a robot because you're not, you're a human being. And as long as you put in the effort every day, that is okay. And as the Kaizen principles showed us, taking a little action every day will add up to great results. So enjoy the process, keep going, keep learning languages and seeing our next courses.