#AskSteve

Full transcript for this video: https://blog.thelinguist.com/learning-a-second-language I am not convinced that hard work and deliberate learning is more effective than taking the easy way. Timelines: 0:02 I do things taking the least time. 0:34 Effortless English by AJ Hoge. 0:59 Taoist principles applied to language learning. 2:24 I don’t like looking words up in a dictionary. 3:19 Don’t try to remember any grammar when you read explanations. 3:42 Never do the grammar questions, read the answers instead. 4:40 Don’t spoil the pleasure of reading with comprehension questions. 5:30 An effortless way of working with flashcards. 6:05 Gold list. 6:37 Don’t use a monolingual dictionary. 7:39 Don’t worry about things you don’t understand. 9:21 Trust the brain. Visit https://www.LingQ.com My Blog: http://blog.thelinguist.com/ My Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/lingosteve My Twitter: https://twitter.com/lingosteve Follow the new LingQ channel: https://goo.gl/WVnzRS Follow "Steve's Cafe" channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/SteveKaufmann

勉強は楽しいほど効果的です。 Timelines: 0:06 効果的な言葉の勉強のために非常に大事のことは？/ What is an essential condition for effective language learning? 1:23 言葉の勉強に苦労しないで方がいい。/ Don’t go hard in your language learning. 2:38 辞書に知らない言葉を調べなくてもいい。/ You don’t have to look up every unknown word in a dictionary. 3:43 文法のルールは時々だけ。/ Refer to grammar occasionally. 4：58 文法に介する質問より返事に注意して方がいい。/ Instead of grammar questions focus on answers. 7:05 フラッシュカードの効果的な使い方。/ The efficient way of using flashcards. 7:58 オンライン辞書の効果的な使い方。/ The efficient way of using online dictionaries. 8:58 要約。/ Summary. Visit https://www.LingQ.com My Blog: http://blog.thelinguist.com/ My Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/lingosteve My Twitter: https://twitter.com/lingosteve Follow the new LingQ channel: https://goo.gl/WVnzRS Follow "Steve's Cafe" channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/SteveKaufmann

🔥 Learn Languages Like I Do with LingQ: https://bit.ly/39d3UTx There is lots of research and discussion on the most effective way to learn languages. The answer is, whatever you enjoy doing with the language. Transcript: Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here. First of all, I want to say that I did a webcam interview with Luca, the wonderful Italian polyglot. We are going to put it up here at my YouTube channel, but I’m waiting until I’m away because while I’m away I can’t do any videos. I’m going to be in Australia and New Zealand and so Alex is going to put up some pictures. I think Luca and I went at it for about 40 minutes or so, so it’s going to be at least four sessions. So that’s when you’ll be seeing those interviews that I did with Luca, just so there’s not a blank for a whole month. I want to talk today, in the subject of language learning, about something that’s kind of been running around in my mind. I come up with all these things that are the key to language learning and I may have used this before, I don’t know, but it suddenly dawned on me that the most important thing is, is it fun. Do you enjoy doing it? I mentioned this in my 7 Secrets to Language Learning, I think the first one was spend the time and the second was to do things that you enjoy doing. Study the full transcript on LingQ: https://goo.gl/pRgnrD Timelines: 0:04 web-cam interview with Luca Lampariello. 0:42 The most important thing is fun. 1:22 The gold-list method by David James review. 4:05 My experience with the gold-list method. 4:49 It works if you enjoy it. 5:42 Time is the most important criteria. 6:09 Does the gold list method work for me? 7:00 Is listening worth spending time? 7:56 You have to find what you actually like doing. 8:19 My way of doing flashcards. 9:10 Creating Lists VS Reading & Listening. 10:46 Passive vocabulary will activate when it’s necessary. 12:46 Finding the content you enjoy is crucial. LingQ: https://bit.ly/39d3UTx My Blog: http://blog.thelinguist.com/ My Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/lingosteve My Twitter: https://twitter.com/lingosteve

Here are the dates: Auckland March 2, Melbourne March 9, Sydney March 15, and Brisbane March 21. I hope to meet some of you there. Learn a language at: http://www.lingq.com Visit my blog: http://blog.thelinguist.com

Full audio and transcript download: https://blog.thelinguist.com/learning-a-language-as-an-adult How does age affect language learning? This was a question on my blog. Here is my answer. I don't think it affects it very much. Timelines: 0:13 Age is in your mind. 1:38 The way children, adults and seniors learn a language. 2:52 Noticing beats memory. 4:31 Does age has an influence on the way I learn languages? 5:30 Why children pick languages up naturally. 6:08 Are you going to struggle with language learning when you pass 20? 8:00 When I am ripe enough to study grammar. 8:34 Is age a really big deal? Visit https://www.LingQ.com My Blog: http://blog.thelinguist.com/ My Twitter: https://twitter.com/lingosteve l:

How long does it take to learn a language? I get asked this often. Another frequent question is whether it is a good idea to learn more than one language at a time. Here I answer these questions. Timelines: 0:18 Can you learn 2 languages at the same time? 0:52 It takes a long time. 1:48 US Foreign Institute Language Difficulty Rankings. 3:02 What are your objectives in language learning? 3:32 How much time Russian and Czech took me? 4:28 How many hours does a language require? 5:23 How much time Chinese took me. 5:53 How much time you should spend studying per day. 7:12 Reaching the comfort level is not the end. 8:08 Do what you enjoy. 9:02 Listening, reading and grammar. Visit https://www.LingQ.com My Blog: http://blog.thelinguist.com/ My Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/lingosteve My Twitter: https://twitter.com/lingosteve Follow the new LingQ channel: https://goo.gl/WVnzRS Follow "Steve's Cafe" channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/SteveKaufmann

Enjoyable but it takes time. Some useful URLs. Russian http://www.echo.msk.ru/interview/ Czech http://www.radio.cz/cz http://www.rozhlas.cz/ctenarskydenik/portal/ http://www.rozhlas.cz/toulky/vysila_praha Here is the link to a conversation with my Russian tutor. http://blog.thelinguist.com/2012/02/evgueny-talks-to-steve-about-russia-in-russian.html Timelines: 0:10 Why started with the Russian language. 2:10 Two reasons why I started learning Russian. 2:40 Materials I used for learning Russian. 5:52 Coming across Ekho Moskvy. 7:31 Going after the Czech language. 8:13 Materials for learning Czech. 10:38 My Czech level now. 11:43 Get used to and enjoy the process of language learning. 12:53 Don’t get hung up when learn a language. Visit https://www.LingQ.com My Blog: http://blog.thelinguist.com/ My Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/lingosteve My Twitter: https://twitter.com/lingosteve Follow the new LingQ channel: https://goo.gl/WVnzRS Follow "Steve's Cafe" channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/SteveKaufmann

🔥 Learn languages like I do at LingQ. Try it for free: https://bit.ly/3Kle4OZ How fast can we learn words? What does knowing a word mean? Here is my blog post on this subject: http://blog.thelinguist.com/can-we-learn-100-words-a-day Transcript: Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here. I posted a post on my Blog The Linguist on Language (I’ll try to remember to leave a link here) where I talked about whether we can learn 100 words a day. I think since I started Czech I have learned more than 100 words a day. Maybe 150 words a day, I don’t know. I describe all these numbers on my blog post. Basically, LingQ says that I know 25,000 words, but that includes non-words, numbers and names. How many of those there are I don’t know, maybe 10%. Plus, I have saved about 20,000 links, which includes a number of phrases. Of the words that I have saved I don’t know how many I know, but I think I know maybe a third of them. So 25-28,000 words in there and then I said that and you’ll see this all on the exchange on my blog. Various people have challenged different aspects of this. Stefan from Denmark said, well yeah, that’s true in an inflected language like Czech where a noun might have six or seven different forms, verbs have different forms. In English there are fewer forms. I mean we do have ‘I go’, but we have ‘he goes’, ‘you go’, ‘we go’, ‘went’ and ‘gone’, so we have a few forms of the verbs. Probably verbs we have as many forms as the Czechs have, but in nouns we just have the singular and the plural and the Czechs might have six or seven. So if I have, theoretically, 25-28,000 words in Czech, what is that equivalent to in English? Study the full transcript on LingQ: https://goo.gl/puZfKU Timelines: 0:20 How many Czech words I have learned. 1:15 Number of words vary depending on a language. 3:29 Do you only know a word when you can use it? 4:40 My first goal is comprehension. 5:18 Even in English I know more words passively then use actively. 7:23 Nailing all words down is not realistic. 8:26 Passive vocabulary grows incidentally. 9:34 Focus on passive vocabulary and active one will come. Visit LingQ: https://bit.ly/3Kle4OZ My Blog: http://blog.thelinguist.com/ My Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/lingosteve My Twitter: https://twitter.com/lingosteve Follow "Steve's Cafe" Channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/SteveKaufmann

We need interesting content to learn from. Content is king! Learn a language at: http://www.lingq.com Visit my blog: http://blog.thelinguist.com

These were languages that I felt were accessible because of languages that I already knew. The key in all cases was finding interesting content. Timelines: 0:17 Who doesn’t want to learn Italian? 1:45 ilnarratore.com - a tremendous Italian audiobook source. 2:51 The materials I used for Italian. 3:54 A month in Italy. 4:29 Lack of interesting materials in Korean. 6:58 Portuguese is more different from Spanish than I expected. 7:58 Portuguese materials on LingQ. 8:44 I have never made difference between Brazilian and European Portuguese. 9:08 Massive podcast source in Portuguese. 10:07 Reading in Portuguese. Visit https://www.LingQ.com My Blog: http://blog.thelinguist.com/ My Twitter: https://twitter.com/lingosteve Content to help you study Italian, Korean, and Portuguese: Italian https://www.lingq.com/blog/2018/11/21/italian-audio-books/ https://www.lingq.com/blog/2019/01/16/italian-sayings-about-food/ Korean https://www.lingq.com/blog/2018/10/12/kpop-lyrics/ Portuguese https://www.lingq.com/blog/2017/12/04/portuguese-pronunciation/

It is not that we need not learn the basics, or need not make and effort to learn them. It is just a matter of when and how. For me this effort comes later, and often, but not in the beginning. Most language programs try to teach them in the beginning. This does not work for me. But I do focus on the basics, from time to time in my language learning. Learn a language at: http://www.lingq.com Visit my blog: http://blog.thelinguist.com

I find that I cannot do it I just forge ahead and learn words and get used to the language? I think we need to cover a lot of ground, some new, some old. We need to exploring new things, pushing the boundaries, while regularly reviewing the basics, many times during the learning process. The basics take a long time to learn. Learn a language at: http://www.lingq.com Visit my blog: http://blog.thelinguist.com Transcript: https://blog.thelinguist.com/learn-the-basics-in-the-language-first-really