#AskSteve

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.

Really enjoyed friendly Myanmar. How about meet ups in Hanoi in Mar 12 and Seoul Mar 20. Can anyone suggest a place to meet?

Here is the lesson at LingQ that covers some of these ideas on organizing your thoughts and public speaking.http://www.lingq.com/learn/en/workdesk/item/1735426/reader/ Hi there Steve here. Today I am going to take a break from the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, although the series will continue, where I expound on each of these habits, but today I want to talk about public speaking. It comes up a lot and it is a wonderful way to practice your skills in a foreign language. It is in some ways related to how we organize our thoughts, even when writing. I went to Sciences Po, L’Institut d'études politiques in Paris, where they put a tremendous emphasis on how we organize our thoughts. One teacher once told me “La forme est plus importante que le contenu”, form is more important than content. When you are public speaking, I think the best the best basic approach to public speaking is to follow the practice of the old Greeks and Romans. I go into some detail on this in a lesson from our LingQ library, where you can find the text and the audio if you are learning English, and I am going to put a link to it here in the description. And to touch upon it here, very quickly, the basic principles were as follows. When you are giving a speech, and of course the old Greeks and Romans oratory rhetoric was very important, they were often defending people in court or whatever… politicians. The basic principles are: You begin by getting people to like you, so therefore it is often a good thing to kind of maybe spill your glass of water or have trouble adjusting your microphone, so that people like you, you’re human. Or you recognize someone in the audience and say “It’s very nice to be here again with my good friend so-and-so”. First thing you get people to like you. The second thing is; you establish your credentials, why should they listen to you? Because I have this experience or that experience, so you establish your credentials. The third thing is to tell a story, people like to hear stories. They don’t want to be brow-beaten with a bunch of arguments. They want a picture created for them, so you tell a story that is related to the subject at hand. Then the fourth thing is, you set out your main argument. Now they like you, they consider you credible, you have painted a bit of a picture and now you present your argument. You can then present a counter argument: “But on the other hand some of you may say something else.” And then of course you follow that up by destroying the counter argument and then you finish off with an emotional appeal, alright? These are, and you won’t remember them all, they’re described in the article that I provided a link to. Whenever I use this I am in control, almost. I am in control of the feelings and almost the reactions. It’s not manipulating, but I have some sense of knowing where I am leading my listeners. They don’t know where they are going and it is actually quite effective. You gain the sympathy and then you gain the interest because they find you credible, because you tell a story, and then you hit them with the main message. You suggest a possible counter argument, you demolish the counter-argument and you end off with an emotional appeal to action, let’s say. And that’s basically it, in a nutshell, but you can read up on it. You can Google various universities, I think Tufts University has a series on rhetoric, or you can simply go to the article that I have posted (http://www.lingq.com/learn/en/workdesk/item/1735426/reader/) here in the description. So there you have it, public speaking, and of course be confident and enjoy yourself. And it is a great way to practice your language skills. Bye for now.

In Yangon. Enjoying Asia and getting used to my selfie-bar.

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here. This is the third in the series of videos where I talk about how Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People applies to language learning. The third of Stephen Covey’s habits is what he calls ‘Put First Things First’. Now, this is advice to a manager and it means if you want your people to perform well you, yourself, have to be proactive and have to be a model they can follow. He says rule number two ‘Begin With the End in Mind’ is what he calls the mental creation, you’ve got this idea of where you want to get to, and rule three is the physical; that is, where you can actually make it happen. So with language learning you have this vision of what you want to be, what level you want to achieve, now rule three is put first things first. In other words, make it happen. Because language learning takes a lot of time, do it every day or as close to every day as you can and be prepared to do it for quite a while. Whenever you have an opportunity, do it. I often talk about how I always have my mp3 player and now, of course, my iPhone 6 Plus, which is a phenomenal device. I have mp3 files on there and I have my texts in ILingQ that I can read whenever I am stuck anywhere. If I’m driving I’ll listen, but if I’m sitting in a waiting room somewhere I can read. I can save words and phrases. I’m always with my language because I know in order to achieve results it’s that time with the language. I don’t have to be talking to someone on Skype. I don’t have to be in the country. I can determine that at every opportunity I’m going to connect with the language by putting first things first because that’s my goal. It’s only by doing that that I’m going to achieve that vision I have of myself speaking the language fluently. So Stephen Covey’s advice is for a manager or a businessman, but I think it has equal application for language learning. Once you’ve determined where you want to get to, you have that vision, what he calls the mental creation, now it’s the physical creation. You’ve got to make it happen, so do it. That’s the third of his Habits of Highly Effective people. Thanks for listening.

I would love to meet up with language enthusiasts in Yangon Mar 3-9, Hanoi Mar 10-18 and Seoul Mar 19-22. Let me know if you are interested.

Lykke is doing the 90-Day Challenge on www.lingq.com. We are having a chat about her progress. Give her blog a read. Transcript: Steve: Hello Lykke Lykke: Hi Steve Steve: Lykke from Denmark, you’ve been with us for a little while now and you are looking after our marketing and communications. Lykke: Yes Steve: But also you have been learning Spanish Lykke: I have, yes Steve: You are doing a 90-Day Challenge Lykke: I am, yes. I have been at it for a month tomorrow Steve: A month tomorrow, that’s 30 days, right? Lykke: Yes Steve: So here we have – we took the trouble of printing out the progress snapshot Lykke: I think I am doing well, no? Steve: Well, I think so. Certainly the known words total exceeds your target, but the big number to me is the lingqs you have created. You have created 1100 almost 1200 lingqs, which is like 3 times your target. Lykke: How many am I supposed to create? Steve: Well 400 – or 390 – so almost 1200 and to me that’s the most important indicator. If you are creating LingQs that means you are looking at words you are trying to notice things and you are also covering a lot of content. Lingqs learned to me is less important because eventually you’ll learn them that is something that comes almost incidentally. I gather you are not recording all your listening, very often the listening recorded is not accurate because you are not able to, and the other one is your words of reading. You have read 11.000 words, so here again that is like more than 4 times your target, so very good. Lykke: Thank you, thank you – I try, I try. Steve: How are you finding it? Lykke: I really like it, last week I wrote about using flashcards and all those little tests and I really enjoy that I feel like I am learning a lot from that. Steve: These are… just to interrupt… these are 4 different ways of reviewing the words and phrases that you save? Lykke: Yes, and I think that’s fun because it’s kind of like a game because I get a little bit bored reading the same stuff again and again and then I think that’s fun and then I go back to reading and listening and then I have picked up more, I think. Steve: You know, this is the thing variety makes everything more fun Lykke: Yes, I think that’s what it is. Steve: Absolutely, and I think particularly too, at the beginning, I think that flashcards like that are particularly helpful because you are reviewing these words and everything is so strange to you later on when you become more comfortable in the language you will be happy to just listening and reading. Lykke: Yes, I like the repetition of it, you see the flashcards more than once and in the end you actually start to understand them a little bit. Steve: Absolutely Lykke: And then when you go back to the text then you are like: Ooooh I recognize that from my flashcards. That’s why I like those, that combination. Steve: Do you review your flashcards before a lesson or after a lesson or not at all connected to a lesson. Lykke: I actually, when I get the email every day 25 lingqs or something – daily lingqs – I actually go in on that day and click that and then just do that whole section Steve: Wow Lykke: So that’s probably why I am doing so well. Steve: How is your comprehension? Lykke: That is sort of up and down. I have good days and bad days and when I have a good day I get very excited, like Yaaay I understand some of it, but then there are days where I don’t understand any of it. Steve: Is that when you are reading or when you are listening Lykke: I think… Well I am listening to very early beginner stuff, so I think when I am reading and listening at the same time I kind of understand a lot of it. If I just listen then I don’t really get it. Steve: If it’s any conciliation to you in Korean which I have been doing now for many many many months, easy simple content I can understand, but the difficult, like the broadcast, if I read and listen at the same time I understand, but when I go away and I listen without reading, I don’t understand. My comprehension goes down to about 15% Lykke: Wow Steve: So it just takes time. Lykke: I think that’s the thing – it’s the patience – I don’t have much of that, but I think I am learning to have some more patience. Steve: Exactly I was going to say, you are not only learning Spanish, you are learning to be more patient as well. Lykke: I think so. Steve: Anything else? Lykke: No, that’s about it I think. Steve: Well, we will check in in about a month from now and we’ll see how things are going. Lykke: Thanks. Read Lykke's blog about learning Spanish: http://www.lingq.com/blog2015/