For the past 19 months, I’ve been learning French. It’s not the first time I’ve tried to learn French, and French is not the first language that I’ve tried to learn, but it’s the first time with real progress being made. Just thought I would share some things which I've learned...
Learning vs. Acquisition
You learn a language through intellectual study. You acquire a language by naturally picking it up.
Many people think there’s a window of time when children are wired to have an easy time learning a language. Children do have an easier time with pronunciation, but adults have the advantage in learning vocabulary and grammar. While your adult brain doesn’t have the same plasticity of a child’s, you can still acquire a language like a child, without teachers, if you create an environment of immersion. There’s a good body of science by the works of Steven Krashen and his Input Hypothesis.
Immersion, just by itself, doesn’t work. You, as an adult, don’t acquire a language by osmosis quite like a child. There are people who live in a foreign country for decades but who never pick up the language (beyond a few words). For immersion to work, you need three things: comprehensible input, fun, and active listening.
According to Steven Krashen, language acquisition happens with comprehensible input. It needs to be just above your level of comprehension, because if it’s too hard, or too easy, you won’t learn anything. In the beginning, nothing is comprehensible, so you have to grind through memorizing vocabulary before immersion really starts working.
It also needs to be enjoyable and interesting to you. Dopamine plays a big role in staying focused and motivated.
You need to be actively engaged in paying attention to what people are saying or writing. There are people who spend thousands of hours with passive listening, hoping to absorb the language by pure exposure, but passive listening doesn’t work. Passive listening helps you get comfortable with the language, but you won’t learn anything. You need thousands of hours of active listening.
Many people think immersion means living in a foreign country. Living abroad has its benefits, you go into “survival mode” where you must learn the language to get by, but for most people for most of their lives, it’s simply not a practical option. Luckily, you can create immersion in your own bedroom.
Learn The Most Common Words
There are really no shortcuts or tricks, no methods which can speed up your learning, except by investing greater amounts of time. But the closest thing to speeding things up is the strategy of learning the most common words.
Luckily, the Pareto Principle applies to language. You only need to know a “few” words to understand 90% of conversations. For French, you need to learn 600 words, for Italian it’s 1,000 words. This is just to get you started with a basic level of fluency, where you still don’t understand every word but enough to follow along with the gist of conversation.
You learn words by spaced repetition. You need to be exposed to a word at least three times over a period of time before you will remember it. Some words will stick into your brain easily and some words you’ll keep forgetting (until you finally remember it).
Whenever possible, learning phrases is more valuable than learning individual words. Phrases give you context to words and the grammar is all done for you. “Chunking” is a method where people learn a lot of phrases.
Listening – Say What?
The tricky part to learning vocabulary is connecting the words with sounds (phonemes). It’s a common struggle in language learning where you’ll intellectually know most or all the words that someone says but it all flies over your head because your ears don’t know the sounds. When you were a child, your brain was imprinted with the sounds of your native language and it ignores the phonemes of all other languages, so you have to retrain your ears.
It’s best to watch content without any subtitles, because it’s pure listening. Subtitles, however, are very helpful in connecting words with sounds.
When you have subtitles, it needs to be in the target language. Science shows that you learn more with foreign subtitles than native language subtitles.
For some reason, it’s very hard, basically impossible, to find French movies with French subtitles. It’s very easy to find French movies with English subtitles, or English movies with French subtitles, but for some nebulous reason French on French is taboo. (Do the French not have any deaf citizens?, it makes me wonder.) The two or three times I’ve found French on French subtitles, the subtitles were incomplete, with huge gaps of time. Netflix has some French on French subtitles, but I quit Netflix.
Movies subtitles are often not word for word. I recommend Youtube because the subtitles are word for word.
Don’t Worry About Grammar
This is probably the most counter-intuitive advice.
In the words of Optilingo, "Many people are unwilling to accept that grammar isn’t necessary at first. They fight against it. Traditional language teachers are probably the worst culprits. Most believe you can’t learn a language without studying grammar first. Reality disagrees."
Grammar is so complex it’s only going to daze and confuse you. Grammar is one of the biggest reasons why people quit, because people feel pressure to speak correctly. The thing is people can still understand the gist of what you’re trying to say even if the grammar is all broken, depending on how closely related are the two languages. Grammar between English and French is very close, so you can get away with speaking English with French words, for the most part.
It’s good to have a grammar book for reference, but don’t try to study it (unless you really want to).
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t learn grammar, but it’s not a high priority. You will naturally acquire grammar through immersion without necessarily having been formally taught it.
Native Speakers Are Not The Best Teachers
You need careful about listening to advice given by native speakers. People who learned a language as a foreign language are generally better than native speakers at explaining grammar. Native speakers know when something sounds wrong, but they can’t tell you why it’s wrong. The thing is you didn’t learn your first language by studying it, you naturally picked it up. There are grammar rules which most native speakers are unaware of, so they are more vulnerable to giving you bad advice, telling you something isn’t a rule, when it actually is a rule.
Monolingual Dictionaries
It’s a good idea to a monolingual dictionary, because it allows you to stay in the language. Obviously, it isn’t helpful in the beginning when you don’t know any words, but once you have some reading fluency, it’s time to switch.
Absorption
A crazy thing happened to me when I was about a year into my learning of French.
I became frustrated of being frustrated of not understanding spoken French, so I decided to take a break to learn Italian. It’s not recommended to learn two languages at the same time, but I wanted to try Italian to see how much easier it would be since it’s phonetic.
After two months of Italian, I went back to French, to maintain my learning, and the most unexpected thing happened. I found after the break that I could understand more spoken French. The subconscious of your brain performs background processing. It was still absorbing and wiring up the language for two months while I was on a break.
So I’m staying with French.
Ever since then, I’ve been more focused on watching content with subtitles. My listening skills are noticeably improving and there are now a few Youtubers who I can understand, without subtitles.
Learning vs. Acquisition
You learn a language through intellectual study. You acquire a language by naturally picking it up.
Many people think there’s a window of time when children are wired to have an easy time learning a language. Children do have an easier time with pronunciation, but adults have the advantage in learning vocabulary and grammar. While your adult brain doesn’t have the same plasticity of a child’s, you can still acquire a language like a child, without teachers, if you create an environment of immersion. There’s a good body of science by the works of Steven Krashen and his Input Hypothesis.
Immersion, just by itself, doesn’t work. You, as an adult, don’t acquire a language by osmosis quite like a child. There are people who live in a foreign country for decades but who never pick up the language (beyond a few words). For immersion to work, you need three things: comprehensible input, fun, and active listening.
According to Steven Krashen, language acquisition happens with comprehensible input. It needs to be just above your level of comprehension, because if it’s too hard, or too easy, you won’t learn anything. In the beginning, nothing is comprehensible, so you have to grind through memorizing vocabulary before immersion really starts working.
It also needs to be enjoyable and interesting to you. Dopamine plays a big role in staying focused and motivated.
You need to be actively engaged in paying attention to what people are saying or writing. There are people who spend thousands of hours with passive listening, hoping to absorb the language by pure exposure, but passive listening doesn’t work. Passive listening helps you get comfortable with the language, but you won’t learn anything. You need thousands of hours of active listening.
Many people think immersion means living in a foreign country. Living abroad has its benefits, you go into “survival mode” where you must learn the language to get by, but for most people for most of their lives, it’s simply not a practical option. Luckily, you can create immersion in your own bedroom.
Learn The Most Common Words
There are really no shortcuts or tricks, no methods which can speed up your learning, except by investing greater amounts of time. But the closest thing to speeding things up is the strategy of learning the most common words.
Luckily, the Pareto Principle applies to language. You only need to know a “few” words to understand 90% of conversations. For French, you need to learn 600 words, for Italian it’s 1,000 words. This is just to get you started with a basic level of fluency, where you still don’t understand every word but enough to follow along with the gist of conversation.
You learn words by spaced repetition. You need to be exposed to a word at least three times over a period of time before you will remember it. Some words will stick into your brain easily and some words you’ll keep forgetting (until you finally remember it).
Whenever possible, learning phrases is more valuable than learning individual words. Phrases give you context to words and the grammar is all done for you. “Chunking” is a method where people learn a lot of phrases.
Listening – Say What?
The tricky part to learning vocabulary is connecting the words with sounds (phonemes). It’s a common struggle in language learning where you’ll intellectually know most or all the words that someone says but it all flies over your head because your ears don’t know the sounds. When you were a child, your brain was imprinted with the sounds of your native language and it ignores the phonemes of all other languages, so you have to retrain your ears.
It’s best to watch content without any subtitles, because it’s pure listening. Subtitles, however, are very helpful in connecting words with sounds.
When you have subtitles, it needs to be in the target language. Science shows that you learn more with foreign subtitles than native language subtitles.
For some reason, it’s very hard, basically impossible, to find French movies with French subtitles. It’s very easy to find French movies with English subtitles, or English movies with French subtitles, but for some nebulous reason French on French is taboo. (Do the French not have any deaf citizens?, it makes me wonder.) The two or three times I’ve found French on French subtitles, the subtitles were incomplete, with huge gaps of time. Netflix has some French on French subtitles, but I quit Netflix.
Movies subtitles are often not word for word. I recommend Youtube because the subtitles are word for word.
Don’t Worry About Grammar
This is probably the most counter-intuitive advice.
In the words of Optilingo, "Many people are unwilling to accept that grammar isn’t necessary at first. They fight against it. Traditional language teachers are probably the worst culprits. Most believe you can’t learn a language without studying grammar first. Reality disagrees."
Grammar is so complex it’s only going to daze and confuse you. Grammar is one of the biggest reasons why people quit, because people feel pressure to speak correctly. The thing is people can still understand the gist of what you’re trying to say even if the grammar is all broken, depending on how closely related are the two languages. Grammar between English and French is very close, so you can get away with speaking English with French words, for the most part.
It’s good to have a grammar book for reference, but don’t try to study it (unless you really want to).
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t learn grammar, but it’s not a high priority. You will naturally acquire grammar through immersion without necessarily having been formally taught it.
Native Speakers Are Not The Best Teachers
You need careful about listening to advice given by native speakers. People who learned a language as a foreign language are generally better than native speakers at explaining grammar. Native speakers know when something sounds wrong, but they can’t tell you why it’s wrong. The thing is you didn’t learn your first language by studying it, you naturally picked it up. There are grammar rules which most native speakers are unaware of, so they are more vulnerable to giving you bad advice, telling you something isn’t a rule, when it actually is a rule.
Monolingual Dictionaries
It’s a good idea to a monolingual dictionary, because it allows you to stay in the language. Obviously, it isn’t helpful in the beginning when you don’t know any words, but once you have some reading fluency, it’s time to switch.
Absorption
A crazy thing happened to me when I was about a year into my learning of French.
I became frustrated of being frustrated of not understanding spoken French, so I decided to take a break to learn Italian. It’s not recommended to learn two languages at the same time, but I wanted to try Italian to see how much easier it would be since it’s phonetic.
After two months of Italian, I went back to French, to maintain my learning, and the most unexpected thing happened. I found after the break that I could understand more spoken French. The subconscious of your brain performs background processing. It was still absorbing and wiring up the language for two months while I was on a break.
So I’m staying with French.
Ever since then, I’ve been more focused on watching content with subtitles. My listening skills are noticeably improving and there are now a few Youtubers who I can understand, without subtitles.
