Learn Any Language - And Chat Along

1. Introduction: Hi. Welcome to part two of my class, How to Learn a Language, just like children do. My name is Katarina. I'm a linguistic writer and I do research on language exquisition. I have created a way for adults to learn a new language similar to the way children acquire their mother tongue. It's a very natural approach and the best thing is that it's actually really fun. It's sufficient, and you feel much more confident in conversations. I speak six languages and I noticed that my confidence and speaking vary from language to language according to how I acquired the special language. If I acquired it in school or if I learned it in the country I live. And since I worked in the field of language exquisition in children, I just combined the two things and came up with a method to learn a language just like children do. And I tried out my technique to learn Spanish. My son recently tried it out and learned Mandarin. Apparently, it works great, and you can do it too. In part one, we start with a very basics. In case you haven't watched part one, I highly recommend you to watch that one first. Here in class two, it's all about talking. It's following up the listening and immersing exercises. Whether you're a beginner or you're on a high level and want to improve, you're very welcome to join this class. 2. Class Project: I'm very excited about this class and I will lead you through exercises that will boost your language skills. Hopefully as your class approaching, I would love you to write down your favorite books that you would love to read and the language you're learning. And it might be books that you already know in your own language or books that you know have been published in the country of the language you want to learn. We hope that you will be able to read the originals very, very soon. I'm curious with what kind of literature you're coming up. Also, I think you will help your classmates have good reads and Yeah. Thank you so much. 3. About Pronunciation: Welcome to this class. It's all about pronunciation. I actually had a long thought about whether I should start this class directly with pronunciation, But I decided that it's really so important that it has to come first in line in this class. Well, you might wonder why this should be so important. I tell you it's not only about being more fluent, but also to keep learning and understand better. Everyone has some accents and individual notes when speaking, but strangely, we are very eager to teach our children how to pronounce the words the right way. And we're very rigid in this. No matter which part of earth we come from, we correct our children when they say a word not in the proper way. And we even send them to language therapist if we have the impression that they haven't learned it yet. So I often wonder why in children language acquisition we see malpronunciation as an issue. When we adults learn a language, we don't even bother to pronounce the words the correct way. Sometimes I think it's because of the very comfortable myth that adults are not capable of it. And so maybe we don't even make an effort. Well, I tell you my experience with malpronunciation. I live in Germany, but originally I'm from Czech Republic, and occasionally some German friends go to Prague and then come back and tell me, oh, you know, I learned some words in Czech. And I say, oh, have you And I say, yeah, did and I say, oh, I don't think I know that one. No, no, no, no. I heard it all the time. Did and I said, okay, maybe you can say it again. And they say it again and again. And in order to understand what they are telling me so proudly, I have to write the letters in my mind according to the German pronunciation, and then I have to read it in the Czech pronunciation. I know what it means for this procedure. I have to know how German pronounce the letters in order to write it mentally. And then I have to also know how Czech people pronounce the certain letters to then understand it. And that leads us directly to the next lesson, which is almost my favorite lesson. It's about a fantastic ABC feeling. 4. Understand the ABC: Welcome to this lesson, all about the ABC. Have you ever wondered about the genius of the alphabet? About how it allows us to move through the languages that use this special system, the Latin alphabet. How we know it today has developed throughout history for thousands of years, consists of symbols for single sounds. And those symbols are the same for numerous languages spoken worldwide. Which makes it much easier for us to learn those languages because we do not have to learn new symbols. However, this can also be a false friend. Then when you think that because the symbols look the same, they also sound the same, which is not comes the difference for toddlers because I know they cannot read and write. But we have decided in part one that we want much more than babies and toddlers do. We not only want to speak the language, we also want to be able to read and write. Therefore, it's very important because we write things to memorize a word or a certain phrase. We write it down in letters. We can remember the phrase and we know how to pronounce it. It also makes it easier for us to learn a language because we don't have a parent who is kind of like a parrot, talks to us all the time and feeds us with the words. And repeats, and repeats all the time. So when we want to pronounce a language the closest way to native speakers, then we not only have to listen closely, but we also have to be aware that the pronunciation, our ABC, might not be the same as the pronunciation of the alphabet in the foreign language. I mean, you already hear it when you say ABC. In Germany it's pronounced abs. In Italian, it's abichi. In French, it's Abyss. You already see just saying ABC in different languages, that the sound of those three symbols already varies. This is also a good thing to write down in your language learning diary. For example, you might recognize Germans by their accent when they speak English. Like for example, a lot of German have problems to pronounce H often instead of thinking, they say thinking instead of there. They pronounce it there. This is a very common way of German speaking English because this was not really taught in school. I also often recognize English speakers when they speak German mostly by the letter in German you speak instead of when English speakers want to say v, which means two, like the number two, they often say it's not that they are not capable of that, it's just that they are not aware of that. As soon as you tell them, then after a bit of practice, they can do it. There's no no real excuse to try, you would say side, I would say side and things like that. But I also want to emphasize that it's not about being perfect now. It's really not about being perfect and about not speaking before you have practiced enough to pronounce the word rate. No, not at all, really. I rather have you speaking just whatever sounds you make and whatever sentences you say in whatever grammar you choose, Rather that than not speaking at all. It slightly adjust your pronunciation, slightly your language, because when you're aware of how to pronounce certain letters, then you can listen to what people are saying. And you might recognize the word because you can write it in your mind and then say, oh, oh, all right, I've read that word so many times, and now I can hear it how the person uses this word. Now it's time to do our first exercise where you can practice your pronunciation. 5. Train Your Muscles: So, welcome to our first exercise, the first reading exercise. You would need a book or any text, maybe from your textbook, or an article from the newspaper, or whatever you like to read. Take a small paragraph, read the text aloud, and try to take into consideration what we learned about the ABC. Read it really very slowly. It's not about the melody of a sentence this time in this exercise, it's really about reading syllable by syllable, word by word, and very slowly so you can feel it. And when you do that, you can pay attention to where you have difficulties like is it a special sound combination or maybe one word followed by another word. It's also about training your muscles a bit and about listening to yourself and pronouncing it the way that you think is correct. You can also record yourself if you want and listen to it, but make sure that it's really slowly at the beginning and if you're happy with that, you can read it quicker than and even quicker. This exercise is really for later on when you want to have a conversation that you don't stumble over words or over syllables. For me, speaking German in Germany. And every time I have to speak another language, then I come to a point where I think, oh gosh, I need training because it's so different to the language I usually speak. So when you're learner, this is a great way to readjust your way of pronunciation. Again, in the next lesson, we will come back to how babies and toddlers learn to pronounce their mother tongue. It's not only listening, they do much more. And so I see you in the next lesson. 6. Watch and Mimic: Welcome to this lesson. It's all about how babies and toddlers learn to pronounce their mother tongue. In fact, they are not only good listeners and good in practicing and doing their exercises and babbling along and listening to their own sounds they make. They are also good observers. That means that babies and toddlers watch the person they are speaking to. They watch our mouth, our lips, our tongue, even. They try to mirror it. We actually do have a mirror neuron inside our brain. You might realize when you smile to people, they smile back. And it's not only because they're a friendly, kind people, but also because of the mireuron babies have the same with the first smile of a baby that makes everyone happy. And it said it's the social smile to make you happy and to take care of the baby. But it's also, we have it in our genes to mirror other people. And this is actually a great tool for language learning because they try to mirror our mouth, our tongue. They listen to the sound that this makes and they play around with their tongue. They play around with the mouth. They try to produce the same sounds that we produce. Of course, they cannot do it right away, because they have to train all the muscles and everything. Babies, especially first have to learn to breathe and to make sound simultaneously. But we do not have to learn all that. We can jump right into practicing how to pronounce a certain sound. Like for example, when you're in language school that you can watch the teacher and watch the mouth. Or when you speak to attending partner and it's not via phone, can watch how they pronounce. You don't have to do it like for one watching their mouth. But with some things, when you think now, was it a V or a B, I don't know. And then you can watch the lips and V and it might sound similar, especially when you're in different Spanish regions. But when you then local the lips, then you actually can mimic that, and it helps your pronunciation. And it might be better actually to tell the person what you're doing and why you're doing it so that it won't lead to misunderstanding. You can also do that by watching movie. Just make sure that you watch a clip from a native speaker or watch a movie in the original language and not an animation film. Nowadays, you can always record each listen to yourself, which is already a kind of feedback. Or you can ask your tendon partner teacher to listen and give you some tips in pronouncing the special words. And now let us take a look on how to learn vocabulary in the next lesson. 7. Keeping New Words: Welcome to this lesson about vocabulary. I know vocabulary and grammar are those things that students are not very keen on. If you follow my classes, then learning new words gets easier and easier every day. With listening and pronouncing, you have prepared yourself to constantly learn. And whenever you read or listen to something, you might recognize the words you already know. So reading and listening will become like a repetition of the words you know. And we all know that repetition also is a huge factor in children learning. So whenever you kind of relax and read a book in your new language, then it's a repetition. And once you have memorized these new words and learned it in context, maybe you also want to use it or you read the sentence aloud. Your mind is actually open to grasp new words and phrases that before you haven't even heard. Because your mind was still occupied with this one word or this special root combination in order to construct a sentence and so on. You know, you know, you always eat one spoonful at the moment. And so that's the same way when learning a language and also hearing words in context, you know, makes it easier to memorize them. It's actually very comfortable because you know right away how and the way to use them. I give you one example. I have a friend who lives in an Asian country and he once said to me, oh, you know, I'm not good at languages and oh, forget it. And, you know, for years I've been trying to memorize some words in Belonese, but it just won't stick. And I cannot even recall the word for sausage, you know, for the special sausage they make. It's one thing to learn a language and another thing to just learn a few words. Sometimes I think it's even fun to learn just, you know, to go to a country and just come home with three or four new words. It's easier to remember them when you put them in context. And that does not have to be a code in the language the special word is in. But you can envelope it in your own language. Like for example, he was in the car and we were listening to a Chinese podcast on very, very beginner level. My son and I, we were picking out a sentence of it and we were kind of saying it back and forth, because it was the last sentence before we stopped the podcast. And somehow this sentence got stuck and we now use it, you know, within the family. It doesn't make any sense. It's practically, this is my older son. So this is the sentence, we just say it every now and then. You know, just sometimes just to say hello. This might sound crazy, but it's a way to remember a word or a phrase. Can also put it in an SMS, you know, or every time you come home, you say Pete, or learn a couple of words from the language first. And you can just substitute. Do you say substitute instead of saying, I wonder if it's going to snow today? You could say, I wonder if it's going to snow, I wonder if it's going to sheneen. So you can incorporate the words into your language just, you know, just to play around. It's actually really about having fun as well. You can use your language learning diary to organize yourself a bit and to write down the words. You can also make it a habit to take one or two, or three words, take that into your week. So every every week you have new words that kind of accompany you throughout the week. We shouldn't forget that we actually learn new words also in our mother tongue, because, you know, when we specialize in a certain field, when we go to work in a new environment, every community has their own use of language, Every professional field, a special language, special words, you know, And you have to learn them in order to communicate with your colleagues. Because otherwise, you know, they would say, what's all that, baby talk and you use the right expression. This tool or so we made to learn new things and to learn new expressions and new words. And we just have to want it and to know that we can do it. And then it's easy. 8. Reading Exercise : Hi, welcome to the second reading exercise. It's actually an exercise that I really love and I personally practice every time I learn a new language. So whenever I practice a new language, I actually get my favorite books in that language. Which I must admit is much easier when this new language follows the Latin alphabet, right? Into your language learning diary. What ideas for books do you have? Or if it's a short story, theater play, or a novel, organize. If you can read it somewhere in the original language or got translated in the language and you want to learn. And there's two aspects to this. Actually, reading a book that you already know gives you the comfort of knowing what it's all about. So you won't get lost so easily when your language skills are just at the beginning. Then you might feel overwhelmed when you're reading a book that is unknown to you. And that you have to figure out what it's all about. And you have the feeling you don't even know what you're reading. Whereas when you know the book already, you just can concentrate on the language, on the phrases, on the structure of the phrases, especially when you're unadvanced learner. This might really help you to concentrate on the language. How is it written? You know, maybe you get more sensitive to the language then because you already, you know how you perceive it in your own language and then it might be very interesting to read it in a new language. Then another aspect is repetition, of course. And that's great when you choose novels because it's longer. You don't have to finish the book. It's not about that, it's about very often an author repeat certain words throughout the works or throughout a certain novel. And if you have just one piece of work, like a novel of, I don't know, 200 or 300 pages, then you might find a repetition of a certain word or of a certain phrase within this work, you know, after seeing a word for the third time, you think maybe I look it up this time because I stumbled over it already three times. Because, you know, you cannot look up every word. You have to understand in context, you know, but sometimes you think, hmm, so what does that really mean? How could I translate it into my language? You know, that's why I actually think that this is a very, very helpful exercise. And it leads us to our next lesson, which is all about structure. So see you in the next lesson. 9. The Structure of a Language: In this lesson, we will look on the structure of the language that we want to learn. Each language has a certain way to put one word after another. I think it's important to see it that way. To put one step after the first and the next and so on. Because once you have a lot of words in your mind, you feel like, oh my God, you know, and you don't want to get lost in the chaos that actually happened to me in the middle of Spanish learning. A friend of mine called me, telling me that she thinks that her son does not speak properly or the caregivers tell her constantly that she should see a therapist. I went to see her for a couple of days. Son actually understood all the things that she said or I said, but he didn't really engage socially and he did not really have the interest of her conversation when in times he had it seemed to me he didn't know how to say it and he would then more act it instead of putting it in words. And when I got home, I said, okay, I want to know how it feels like. And I started to experiment with this, which was not so good for my Spanish learning. I wanted to know how it feels to have a lot of words accumulated in your brain and not being able to say what you want to say. So not being able to use it, you put one word after the next, and the next, and the next in order to create a line and in order to create some structure in order to help you structuring what already know, wait to the next exercise. 10. Structure Exercise: So this is the structure exercise and it's our first exercise towards really talking, saying things in our own words. We are going to write down and read aloud a little simple sentences. This might be phrases that you wrote down in the first exercise or new ones, those easy sentences down. And you can also write sentences down from a book when you think, oh, this is a sentence I'm going to use. So you have one concrete sentence, you know, like tomorrow I go to university. Say it aloud and read it and say it in rhythms. You can pick one sentence, a very easy sentence, and modify it to pick a very easy one, which has a subject verb and object. I buy bread, for example, I buy bread. You can find substitutes like Sally buys bread. Bread buys bread. You buy bread. You should know how the verb is formed. If you don't know that, you can also substitute the verb, I buy bread, I bread, I walk bread, which doesn't make any sense. I lie bread, which also doesn't make sense. Try to play around with what you know. I buy bread, I buy tomatoes. And then you can go through the list of food or objects that you know. So I buy bread, I buy tomatoes, I buy eggs, I buy milk, I buy gardens, I buy houses. And then you can go, maybe you know the verb for read. So I read books, I read music, I read bread. Play around with it a little bit. Just try to make sure that it's grammatically correct. Just when you play around and see this is okay, either it's nonsense or this is grammatically not correct. And you can market and say, no, no, no. And you can either you know, correct your phrases by yourself or you can ask someone to help you. A good thing is write down all the verbs, you know. After the second day of learning Spanish in Spanish school, I wrote down all the verbs and fascinated how many verbs I have learned After only two days, you can sort them according to their end. They can just see if you can use them in the right way and yeah, it's fun. 11. Gain More Fluency: In this lesson, we will look into ways, how to gain more fluency. After the last exercise, you should have a fine pallet of phrases and expressions that you can use. For example, a lot of things that I like to learn is I like or I love, I like this. Very simple, but you can learn it very quickly therefore, and use it in so many contexts or I don't know or I want to go, or I'm interested in art. In the last exercise, you have written down easy simple sentences and expressions that you can use in your every day language. You can implement them in the conversations you have. Well, this might give you the feeling that you build your conversation with fixed building blocks. It still leaves you enough room to bring in your very personal. You can experiment and leave the well known path. It does not hurt to repeat the learned phrases again and again and use them because actually each society uses fixed phrases. And as a child, you hear those phrases again and again. You get to know patterns of what you say. For example, you receive a gift and the parent, I don't know how you say that in English, but in June it's what is it that you should say? If you receive a gift, then you say, thank you. You know, remember that. As a child, what do you say when you greet someone? What do you say when you introduce someone? There are special phrases for special situations and it's good to know them. You don't have to construct each phrase again and again. You just take the phrases and say that this will also enhance your fluency. And you can then always construct more sentence. I guarantee you that people are more patient and listen to you when occasionally you also just say one sentence without stammering. Even if you get one particle wrong in that sentence, it doesn't really matter. But it gives you the confidence that you can speak a whole sentence. When I talk to someone and he's so afraid of speaking and he says, yeah. Then I have the feeling that he either doesn't want to speak to me or he really doesn't understand when I'm talking. He has bisno come aba beli benites, fine. So this was not really grammatically correct, but it doesn't matter because he gave me the information that you wanted to give me and I heard it. And I can then to him, oh, okay, to systo meat fats and convince don't only learn the grammar and the words and then try to mend them together. Learn whole expressions, the things that you wrote down. Practice them at home. And practice them with your conversation partner. And this is actually our next lesson, the lesson about having a conversation. 12. Practice With a Partner: We have two exercises ahead of us, two which are really great fun. Find yourself a tending partner, that is really a great way to practice the new language. The concept of a language tandem is that you find a partner that wants to learn the language that you speak that you're good at, your mother tongue may be and contrary speaks the language that you want to learn. Meet up for 40 or 60 minutes and then divide the time and say, okay, half an hour we speak my language, in half an hour we speak your language. I recommend to start in the language that one of you speaks more fluently than the other. Just just to make sure, you know, you can say hello and introduce yourself. How do you find a partner? A great way to find a partner is maybe back boards in universities or in a language learning school, the Internet. There are actually also special apps that allow you to find a tandem part, which is great because you don't have to live in the same town. Put in your interests and so on so that you have actually some things to talk about. It's about having real conversation. How do you prepare for a tandem lesson? You can jump in as you are, but more effectively you read something in that language before you speak to attend and partner. Or when you prepare some sentences, like for example, you can find a topic you want to speak about because it interests you. Or maybe you want to tell the partner what happened today or what you plan for tomorrow. Maybe you only speak in present tense at the beginning, but you can just tell the conversation partner, it happened last week. You can't say it in the past. It's okay to say it in the present and to practice the words and put word after word together. To put sentence after sentence. To occasionally fill it in with sentences, with whole expressions, with phrases that you learned. No small talk phrases like, oh, it was crazy. You know, I'm in the first meeting. Maybe you want to also explain your hobbies or what you do for work, or what you like to read or what you read currently. You can also write down vocabulary if you think you want to use it, but then also know in which context you want to use it. In the beginning, it's actually very helpful to write down a whole sentence because already reading a sentence to another person or trying to say the sentence by heart is difficult. It actually is. Saying a whole phrase in the other language at the beginning is totally difficult. You want to say more phrases. And then it depends on tandem partner. Very helpful or not. So what you can do to help your tandem partner is to say yes, yes, mm hm. To encourage their talking and also to repeat what they said. Because this is also what parents do they say? Ah, yes, bananas. Oh, I like bananas. And then you can say, oh, you like bananas very much. And for example, when I spoke English with a Spanish friend, I noticed that she mixed up the auxiliary words have to and must. She didn't use to, she used must, but she used it with the particle two. She always said she did it so often that actually I told her that in English you don't use the two. It was nice to see that she took that into consideration. Every time we spoke afterwards, she was really, then she realized, oh no, it had gotten a habit to use must too. And so it's much more difficult to get away from that habit, but it was great. And I think you can say those things with respect. I mean, of course, you don't meet a person for the first time, not in the context of language learning and correct them all the time, you know, because some people are not even interested in learning a language. If you become aware of your own mistakes while listening to your tandem partner or a native speaker and you realize, oh, actually I've done that wrong all the time. And you might want to write the Ci language learning diary, remember that? Because when you not use that, after a couple of months maybe the old habit comes back. So it's a great, great thing to write it down. And in the next lesson, I want to introduce you to my favorite fluency exercise you can practice when you are all by yourself. I hope you enjoy it. 13. Practice by Yourself: Welcome to the last exercise In this lesson, I want to introduce you to my very favorite all alone practice your language exercise. You know, I all really love the sing along exercise from part one and another really fun exercise is self talk or mirror talk. So you can choose what you love best, either in front of the mirror or in front of nothing. Maybe you want to sit on the couch or at the dinner table and just talk to yourself aloud. You can also sit in front of your computer and film yourself while speaking. I notice that when you recall yourself, you get shy a bit. Whereas, when you're all by your self and without recording, without filming, then you have more confidence. And you can just, you know, say stupid things as well. No one judging you, not even you judging yourself. So you're quite safe. So how do you prepare? Like you can just jump into this exercise whenever you feel like it or whenever you have a moment by yourself or you have read something, and you need to get rid of all the words that have accumulated inside yourself. And you just want to speak, speak, speak. You can also prepare yourself. Similar like you prepared yourself for the tandem partner conversation. A way to make it easier is to imagine a certain person you want to talk to. Because some people think it's weird to talk to themselves, for example. I also do acting to practice a certain scene. Then I just have to imagine that other person is here as well. I just practice the text alone without the person. But of course, I imagine this person being there in the scene somewhere. So it makes sense to say something and to not say it into the void, but to actually talk to someone, can think about what would you like to tell this person. Time you get stuck. Try to be aware, is it because you don't know the right word or is it because you don't know how to structure the sentence? If you don't know the right word or the right expression, but maybe you can describe what you mean with other words, write down. Afterwards, it was more difficult for you to find the right word to structure your sentence. Practice accordingly down more phrases that you can use. Translate what you would say in your own language, or try to learn more vocabulary and maybe read more in the field that you want to expand. When you use a mirror, you can talk to your mirror self. Or imagine that there is someone else listening to you. Like you can imagine that there is an interview and maybe you are a popular singer or an actor or writer. This is actually quite fun. You're allowed now to be whoever you want to be for this 20 minute self talk. 14. Final Thoughts: Wow, we've come to an end again, and I very much hope that you enjoyed this class. Part two of How to learn language. Just like children do by now, you should be on a safe to one level, depending on the amount of vocabulary, you know, how many tensas you already speak in that language. So as I said in part one, I recommended to find a textbook or a language school, especially when you want to get certificates. They're classified in a certain way. If you do not really need certificate to learn language is to have a beautiful conversation. I very much hope that with those exercises you can get more advanced in the topics you're interested in or in the topics your profession is in. And I hope these classes support your self study, and I'm actually very confident that they boost your listening and talking skills. And in only days or weeks as usual, write down the process into your language learning diary to see what progress you've made. Really, don't forget to have fun. This point is often underestimated, but it's so important. Fun and relaxed learning, you will reach your goal much faster and with more confidence. And this is what I hope for. So I'm looking forward to your class projects. Follow me, because there is going to be some follow up classes, like for example, how to keep a language learning diary. See you next time.