#AskSteve

http://www.lingq.com/language-proficiency-test/ Share with your friends - Everyone can use LingQ's new proficiency test. Hi – I have an announcement to make. This week at LingQ we are launching a proficiency test, which you can do and have fun with. Try to measure your level of proficiency in the language that you are studying. At the present moment we have this for English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese and Russian only. We will perhaps expand it to other languages, so if you are learning any of those languages or if you are a speaker of those languages learning English, you will be able to use the test. And you can do it as many times as you want, it’s quite fun, I have done it. It’s kind of addictive. We can talk about it on the forum at LingQ, you can compare yourself to your friends. It is also maybe useful in terms of trying to figure out what level you are at so that when you go about choosing content in our library or if you wish to know what level you are within LingQ this might be helpful, but it’s mostly meant to be fun. Oh and I should add that it works on your IPhone and Android (browser) phone – it is portable, so if you are out somewhere waiting you can simply do this little test and because you can do it as often as you want and it will take you up through different levels, it should keep you busy for quite a while, so please enjoy it and I look forward to hearing people’s reactions to it. And I am going to leave a link here in the description, so that you can go and get started testing yourself. Bye for now.

Now, the final habit in Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is what he called ‘Sharpening the Saw’. In other words, if you’re a manager you want to work on making sure you have good values. He stresses values in his book, developing certain skills, whether it be the ability to use certain modern technology or if you’re in a professional in some field to constantly take courses to make sure you’re up to date and so forth. In the case of language learning, there are a number of ways in which we can sort of sharpen our saw. One of them is simply through exposure to the language and building up your vocabulary because a good vocabulary is going to help you in every situation. Also, I find an occasional review of grammar, especially if the grammar is heavy to examples rather than explanations. The brain has trouble dealing with theoretical explanations, but the brain is very good at recognizing patterns and creating connections that relate to patterns. I find it useful to review patterns so that it makes me more conscious of certain structures and then I start to notice them better, so an occasional review of grammar. Another way of sharpening the saw is actually to start speaking because it’s all going to make you more attentive. If we take this image of sharpening the saw, we are doing something that is not urgent. In other words, rather than sort of being all concerned about this next engagement with the language that I won’t understand or I won’t be able to say what I want to say, it’s thinking that I am doing something that is going to build up my skills for the future. So what I’m doing is important, but it’s not urgent. I’m developing my skills; therefore, I have this sense of satisfaction, achievement. I’m doing things to improve my skills and the benefits will come later on. I think we can have this sort of sharpening-the-saw approach to all of our language learning activities so we don’t get discouraged when we feel that we’re not making as much progress as we would like because all of our activities are actually improving our skills and the benefits will flow to us later on. So there it is, I’ve tried in these short videos to kind of go over again how Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has application for us in our language learning. I hope it kind of helps to stimulate you to put that effort in to reaching your language goals. Thank you for listening, bye.

Hi there. Steve Kaufmann here again. I have been asked to do a video comparing classroom study to independent or online study of languages. The simple answer is that I think the difference is that online study or rather independent study is much more effective and much less expensive than classroom study and I am going to explain why, but then I am going to explain – sort of a condition, alright. The reason that I think that is that in my own experience classroom study is very ineffective. Now obviously if you have a one on one relationship with a tutor – classroom study of that kind can be very effective, but if you are in a classroom with 5, 10, 15 or in some cases in Asia 70 in a classroom. I don’t think you’ll learn much in that scenario. And the reason is that a lot of the time you will listen to your classmates who speak poorly. I see the same result with my grandchildren who are in French immersion. They have had everything in school in French since they started school. They have had chemistry, their social studies, everything in French and yet they have a very poor accent, because mostly they listen to each other. If and I have mentioned before that the majority of kids in Canada who are in the regular French stream even after 10 or 12 years can’t speak. If the same amount of time had been spent listening to and reading content of interest occasional review of basic patterns of the language – I believe they would be better off. Even if you are in a classroom I think the learning takes place outside the classroom. Again, unless you are in a one on one situation, but if you’re in a class with 5 or 10 people to me that’s not an environment conducive to learning, so the classroom may inspire you and may set goals, and of course the classroom is a tremendous social environment where you meet your friends, but ultimately if you want to learn in a classroom environment, you have to after the classroom; listen, read, write, speak to people and you can do all the kinds of things that you can do without the classroom. Now the condition is that, probably today the majority of people aren’t motivated enough or don’t have enough confidence or don’t know how to learn languages so that they need the classroom because without the classroom they would not do much, so to that extent the classroom has the effect of putting the subject in front of people by giving them some objectives, giving them some tests to prepare for and forcing them to do things. But if you are motivated enough to learn on your own then I think the classroom is quite unnecessary. Now, learning on your own though – people have to learn how to do that and I have posted a new post on my blog and I’ll leave a link, a description where I talk about learning on your own and I think you need to have a mix between exploring the language and exploring different subjects via the language sort of grazing, on the one hand which is maybe 70 or 80% of the time and some more disciplined approach to reviewing in a very basic rote way the main structures and patterns of the language, recognizing that you will forget them and relearning and forget them and relearn them, but some degree of discipline and some effort to knock of sort of basic simple tasks that gives you the sense of satisfaction that you did something needs to be mixed in with the more general listening and reading. So if you proceed in that way there is no question in my mind that learning on your own is more effective and much less expensive than learning in a classroom, however maybe it is only a minority of people who are capable of doing that. I hope the number of people who will learn independently will increase and you might also with reference to that thought look at my blog post (http://blog.thelinguist.com/effective-independent-learning-for-life) on the subject of Independent learning. Thank you for listening – Bye for now

Hi there. I am back. Steve Kaufmann here I am back from my 20 day visit to Myanmar, Vietnam and Korea and I want to talk about visiting the country and learning the language. You often hear that in order to learn a language you have to visit the country and some people suggest that you get a phrase book before going there and then when you get there you will be able to use these phrases. So I will talk about my experiences in three countries. Before going to Asia I did buy a Vietnamese phrase book with some MP3 files, some audio or CDs, which I listened to. I do not know how much time I put in, a couple of hours, but I went to Myanmar first. Before. I didn’t do anything before, but when I went there I did buy a little phrase book: Burmese. OK – my experience is as follows: In Burma for six days, seven days I must have asked people 20 times, how do you say ‘Hello’, how do you say ‘Goodbye’, how do you say ‘Thank you’, and maybe ‘Please’. I mean those are really the only words that you have a chance of saying if you are there for six days. I came out of there being able to say maybe two things that I can remember. (Min-ga-la-ba) which is hello or good day or whatever and (cè-zù tin-ba-deh) which means thank you and (ta-ta) is goodbye and I had to ask literally over and over again, but I kept on forgetting. The only one that sticks after a while is (Min-ga-la-ba) because people say it to you all the time because they are so friendly and I had to have a little thing in my mind all the time, like (Min-bai-la) like Chinese to try and remember (Min-ga-la-ba). The point is; it’s very difficult to pick up phrases and looking in this phrase book, I mean it was hopeless to me. I mean how do you say, ‘Where is the...?’ Not a chance unless the language is pretty close to a language that you already speak. So stimulating to be there, but in terms of actually trying to say something – and even If I were to say something so well, like ‘Hello’ and they started to speak to me in their local language, I would be lost. So looking at a few phrases before you go there, like in the case of Myanmar, is useless. Vietnam, despite the fact that I studied, not studied, but did listen and tried to get something, again I ended up with four or five words (sin-chow) which is hello, (kom-an) which means thank you, (tam-pia) which means goodbye, (shin-loi) which means excuse me, and I think that’s about it, but after seven days, lots of effort I even bought a dictionary so that I could perhaps look up the words that I wanted to say – useless. I even also went to buy this book to see how the Chinese characters are pronounced in Vietnamese, I found that there aren’t nearly as many of those words in Vietnamese as there are in Korean or in Japanese so the Chinese characters aren’t that big of a help. So all I am saying is, going there with a phrase book, hoping it will help you learn any kind of meaningful communication is a hopeless dream. All you can do is, not communication, it is about saying something in their language, which it’s like showing off and very often they appreciate it, so if you say ‘come on’ and ‘thank you’ in Vietnamese, people appreciate it more than if you just said ‘thank you’ (in English) sometimes. So it is not a major way of learning the language. Korean – of course I have spent a lot of time on Korean – I find Korean difficult, despite all the time I have spent on Korean. When I first arrived in Korea, actually it was difficult to swing into action right away. To try to use the language. I went to the subway and couldn’t quite figure out how to use their vending machine and I asked one of the employees of the metro system and he could not really understand what I was saying and I could not really understand what he was saying. Communication ZERO. However, within two or three days of being there of using it a little more here and a little more there all of my passive learning got activated quite quickly and in our meet-up night where we had both Koreans and foreigners who spoke Korean, I was able to speak quite a bit of Korean and then subsequently when I had to talk to taxi drivers and in other situations where I was dealing with people who could not speak English, it was surprising how after a day or two or three, the passive learning gets activated. So I sort of want to restate my conviction that if you want to go and benefit from visiting the country, make sure that you put in enough time. We are talking six months, a significant investment in the language and even then when you get there it will be a day or two or three before you can activate it but then it’s not just that you use it and hear it more but there is something about being in an environment where that is the language of communication, so that it is no longer just an academic exercise. That sort of atmospheric environment has the effect of activating your language...

Now, again, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and how it applies to language learning and the sixth habit that Covey has is ‘To Synergize’. He talks about combining the strengths of people through positive teamwork so as to achieve goals that you couldn’t achieve on your own. As I said in my introductory video, in language learning the synergy comes from doing all of the different skills or all of the different language tasks. There’s no point in saying I can speak, but I can’t read or I can read, but I can’t speak and everything we do contributes to the other skill. Reading, for example, is not just about reading. Although, it’s a wonderful way to learn about a culture, it’s a wonderful way to accumulate words. If you accumulate words, you have more confidence when you’re speaking. When we read we often sub-vocalize, so reading is a way to improve our pronunciation. As we sub-vocalize, we become aware that there are words we don’t know how to pronounce and so we might become more attentive and listen more carefully to those words when we’re listening. I find, for example, if I listen without having the text I have trouble remembering the word. I really need to read and then I can associate a written, depending on the language. It could be characters in Chinese, it could be simply an alphabet in Russian or Korean, but that I associate this sound with these words and that reinforces my ability to remember it. Writing, if you have the discipline to do it, is a great way to get started in output. There’s no pressure on you, so you write. I find that when I write in a foreign language, basically, I just write as if I were speaking. In English I can have sort of a literary style and a more casual style, but when I’m speaking a foreign language, unless it’s maybe French, I don’t really have a separate literary style. It’s essentially my spoken language written down. Writing reinforces your speaking ability, in my opinion, and your speaking ability reinforces your writing ability, so it’s a good idea to practice all skills. Even though, as you know from my videos, I prefer to spend the bulk of my time on input for the longest while to build up my sort of potential capability, then I need more and more opportunity to speak where I take advantage of what I have built up through these other activities. All activities, in fact, work with each other so you do have lots of synergy when you are learning languages.

A brief video of our lively meet up. More people arrived later and great discussions were enjoyed by all.

People express themselves and people have ideals. I love the energy of this city.

New business centre. Took taxi ride back via Namgang (river). Scale of city is mind blowing. Meet up tonight at Exti #1 Hoehyeon subway stop .My cell phone 1-6047647090 if you come late or get lost.

Amazing city. Meet up tonight.

Hi there, Steve here, again, continuing in this series about the application of Stephen Covey’s very inspiring book 7 Habits of High Effective People and how it applies to language learning. His fifth habit was what he calls ‘Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood.’ This applies in life. We should always listen before talking. Hear what people have to say. If we understand what they have to say we can respond to it much better. Well, the same is true in language learning, that’s why my whole approach to language learning is so heavily input-based. I want to understand. I want to understand the culture. I want to understand what people have to say. I want to feel confident that in any conversation there won’t be any big surprises. I won’t find myself constantly saying I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon. So developing this level of understanding is key then what we have to say is going to make sense. It’s going to be a response to what people have said. It’s not just going to be trotting out a few sentences that we feel confident in uttering. It also gets back to some of these other habits like the Win-Win. In other words, any engagement you have with the language. If you are connecting with it, understanding, listening and reading, all of this is a powerful win. So by having a learning strategy that focuses on understanding, you’re guaranteeing yourself the sense of win and achievement. If, on the other hand, you look at language learning as a performance then you’re constantly second guessing yourself. Oh, I didn’t speak as well as I would like. I wasn’t able to express my thoughts. I struggle to find words. Whereas, when you are listening you’re constantly gaining. You’re constantly learning listening and reading, understanding, understanding not only the language, but understanding some aspect of the culture. I just find that this emphasis on understanding the language, the culture, on soaking it in rather than wanting to trot out the few sentences that you can use is much more long lasting, in the long run a much more satisfying way and it builds up a solid case from which to develop your output skills. So seek first to understand, then to be understood, I think that applies to language learning.

Let's meet at 7 pm March 20th at Exit # 1 if the Hoehyeon station. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoehyeon_Station. From there we can go to a near by restaurant. If you are late you can email me (steve at ling dot come) and I will let you know where we are.

Hi there. Here we are, number four in Stephen Covey’s Habits of Highly Successful People, ‘Win-Win’. Now, in negotiations win-win means that I’m not going to try to impose something on you that’s only going to benefit me and not benefit you. If I can come up with something that benefits you and benefits me we both win. That’s far more likely to be a successful negotiation, a successful business relationship or even a successful discussion with someone that’s working for you. How does it apply to language learning? I meet so many people who are constantly negative about themselves when it comes to language learning. They say, I can’t do this, I can’t do that. I’ve been trying to understand, I don’t understand. I keep forgetting my words, when I go to speak I’m tongue-tied. I mean, there’s no end of complaints that people have about their own performance in the language. The fact is that language learning takes time. You are moving from the comfort of your own language where you understand everything and you can express yourself as an adult and now you’re trying to start all over again in another language. It takes time and everything is very foggy and uncertain for a long time. My own experience is if I look something up a dictionary, I forget the meaning as soon as I close the dictionary. That’s why I don’t use traditional dictionaries. It’s just a waste of time, that’s why we have our system. There’s a lot of frustrating things in language learning, you have to realize that going in. Once you accept that, then all of the time you spend with the language speaking it, listening to it, reading it with however much difficulty and however it didn’t maybe meet your expectations it’s a win because you need to spend that time with the language. So if you have struggled through a text and you still don’t understand it or you can read it but then when you go to listen to it you don’t understand it, all of these things which can be frustrating, shouldn’t be frustrating. You say to yourself great, I did that. I had enough willpower, staying power to spend that half hour or that hour and I’m going to do the same thing again tomorrow and every time I do that I’m gaining slowly on the language. I’ve experienced this so many times when it seems that for months and months I just can’t seem to understand it. I can get now to where I can read it, I can actually hear the words, I know where they sort of end and the next word begins, but I still can’t understand it. Yet, eventually I do. So whatever time you spend with the language is a win. It’s a win-win situation. Thanks for listening, bye for now.