5 ms·

There has been so much written on this topic. I don't think people actually agree on what's the best way to learn a foreign language, and that includes language

There has been so much written on this topic. I don't think people actually agree on what's the best way to learn a foreign language, and that includes language teachers. Various methods I have encountered include: * Focus on reading text and vocabulary. Grammar will follow naturally from the text. * Focus on grammar. Vocabulary is a detail. * Focus on speaking. Speaking is the key to fluency. Speak to as many natives as possible. (Note: this can be incredibly annoying to said native speakers) * Focus on writing. This is the best way to retain both vocabulary and grammar. Speaking will follow when you have vocabulary and grammar memorized. * Focus on listening/hearing. Understanding is the key to communication. Remembering grammar and vocabulary will follow naturaly, e.g. from TV shows, games, movies, songs, etc. in the target language. I could go on and on and on. Seriously. My advice is two-fold: * Stick with a language. Whatever your method is, don't give up. * If your method doesn't work for you, change it. If your teacher doesn't work for you, change it (e.g. textbook, school, course, TV show, whatever the "teacher" is). It's that simple. Truth to be told, learning a language is mostly hard work. There is no secret. There is no "aha, you've been doing it wrong, you could have learned Chinese in 3 months!" method. For example, using Anki might be useful, and you might find it fun, but it will not magically make you remember anything. And, even if you remember something in the context of Anki, you might not recognize it in the wild (e.g. in a text, song, or a game). Alternatively, you might not be able to produce it (e.g. passive recollection is very different from active production of the language). I think the best one can do when learning a language is to simply stick with it. In the grand scheme of things, whether it will take you 4 years, 5 years, or 6 years to feel fluent is fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. It will, most likely, be years though.

dheera 5y ago
> aha, you've been doing it wrong, you could have learned Chinese in 3 months! Honestly there kind of is, you just have to put yourself in a "sink or swim" situation as the article says. You'll be surprised how far you can get in 3 months if you are in such a situation. Also, don't believe any crap when someone tells you "X language is hard". This is perhaps the biggest myth I have ever seen. It's only hard if you think it is, and if you try to learn everything by rules and flashcards, which native speakers don't generally do. You can also try to make anything look hard that actually isn't. I find people in the US especially love to talk about how hard Chinese (and also Japanese and a few others) is but it isn't particularly different in difficulty than English or any other major world language. 5-year-olds can handle it, they just weren't told it's hard, they just needed to speak it if they wanted to argue and get their stolen pencil back.
- kevinstubbs 5y ago
  Any grammar is surmountable, but the languages that are truly hard are ones which have sounds or consonant clusters that your native language(s) don't. For example, learning Georgian as a native English/Italian speaker.. I could hardly even say basic words like "forest" (t'ke), "water" (tsqali), or "frog" (baqaqi) for the first few months. Look up the ყ letter, or listen and judge for yourself ბაყაყი წყალში ყიყინებს (the frog cries in the water) Hear natives speak it: https://forvo.com/word/%E1%83%91%E1%83%90%E1%83%A7%E1%83%90%E1%83%A7%E1%83%98/#ka https://forvo.com/word/%E1%83%91%E1%83%90%E1%83%A7%E1%83%90%... The one by shaburgiorgi is the most faithfully enunciated, while the others are what you would more likely hear casually/in conversation.
  - dheera 5y ago
    > I could hardly even say If I may take the liberty to nitpick, that's a thing only an adult would say. A 5-year-old would just try.
    - kevinstubbs 5y ago
      That's a pretty unforgiving interpretation of what I wrote. Sounds came out of my mouth and people didn't understand what I was trying to say.
      - dheera 5y ago
        > Sounds came out of my mouth and people didn't understand what I was trying to say. Right, and as a 5 year old who wants your pencil back, you find another way to say it. If you don't know how to say "backpack" you say "bag". If you don't know how to say "foyer" you say "that place near the door". If you don't know how to say "pencil" you say "pen" or "writing stick". I realize it was an unforgiving interpretation. That was directed at the topic and not you personally. That's kind of my point. If you have a sink-or-swim attitude or situation you will learn it.
    - bsder 5y ago
      > A 5-year-old would just try. And a 5 year old would be cut a lot of slack for screwing it up. One of the issues with learning anything as an adult is that other adults are viciously unaccommodating. Foreign language learning turns that up to 11. Personally, I think this is the primary issue with adult learning. You have to be a very strong personality to have an intrinsic motivation that will cause you to put in long hours of work because you aren't going to get any external motivation for a very long time.
tarkin2 5y ago
There's not one method, because there's not one type of brain, not one type of learner.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  Also, not one type of language.
- vimy 5y ago
  That’s a myth.
davidzweig 5y ago
There are different valid approaches, but there are certainly techniques that are ineffective; I think the popular "just do something" advice is harmful as it suggests all approaches are equally valid. I think it's possible to develop an intuition about whether an activity is more or less beneficial for your learning. Here's the best advice I could write down: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/66myn1/a_short_guide_to_independent_language_learning/?st=jlmshg74&sh=263cd3fb https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/66myn1/a_...
- hiptobecubic 5y ago
  There is a huge gap between "something is better than nothing" and "all things are equally good."
  - davidzweig 5y ago
    'Language learning advice is conflicting,' 'Stick with a language, Whatever your method is, don't give up.' 'If your method doesn't work for you, change it.' I agree with the author. I think a lot of language learning advice is of poor quality, or it's hard to establish complex behaviours simply from reading an article. It's hard to write stuff down that you could expect to improve the odds of the student. Learning a language on your own is a kind of a funny hack, it's like learning to program without access to a computer, it can be done but it needs specific techniques. I make software for learning languages, writing proper instructions for using it is something that I consider difficult and I don't attempt it. :)
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
Okay, but can't we objectively experimentally compare them? Take a class of 20 undergrads, have them use method X. Have the next class use Y. Repeat with as many methods as needed, with as many classes/semesters as needed, control for as many confounding factors as you can. Publish papers, reproduce. Is the noise floor too high, the effectiveness too close, or am I missing something? (Yes, probably that last one; if so, what?)
- BossingAround 5y ago
  I think that the field is fraught with a number of caveats, just off the top of my head: * "I learned a language" is a very poorly defined statement. It's really difficult to quantify. The EU tried with their language levels [1], but it's still a mess. So you get a person that says "I speak 15 languages! Just follow my method forehead!" while an academic says "this person speaks two languages barely, and makes noises in the rest." "I know a language" means different things for different people, depending on one's motivation to learn a language. Do you want to book a hotel room? Do you want to read a newspaper? Do you want to read Crime and Punishment in the original? Note that, for example, reading a newspaper is significantly easier in Tagalog, which uses a mixture of English and Filipino, than in Chinese, which requires you to know around 3 thousand Chinese characters. * Learning a language is highly influenced by your native language. If you take 20 undergrads, you might conclude that "to learn language X as a native speaker of Y, the best method seems to be Z." Then, other papers will likely dispute your definition of "learning" (see previous point). * Learning a language is highly dependent on your motivation. If you take a class of 20 people, their motivation to learn a language X is going to be all over the place. Learning a language is always really difficult, even when a language is deemed easy (like Spanish). Most people will drop off unless they are really driven to learn the language. Long story short, I don't think it's as easy to apply the scientific method. There's a reason why we don't have a matrix of "if you're a German speaker wanting to learn Russian, here's the optimal syllabus for you." On the flip side, I do think we can say something about language learning. For example, apps like Duolingo are not that useful. I don't think that's a very controversial statement in the language learning community. Similarly, just moving to a country won't do anything special for you (other than utterly isolate you). For example, you won't pick up any Japanese from your one-room 40-squared-feet apartment in downtown Tokyo alone. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages#Common_reference_levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_R...
presentation 5y ago
There is definitely a difference in the quality of content you consume though, which is a bummer - new language learners don’t know what’s good. I just ran across a YouTube channel [1] which if I had known about it when I was starting Japanese, would have probably prevented me from getting confused about a great deal of things. But there really is no substitute for persistence, regardless of technique. [1] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06... (though her pronunciation is very unnatural, her explanations are spot on)

dheera 5y ago

> aha, you've been doing it wrong, you could have learned Chinese in 3 months! Honestly there kind of is, you just have to put yourself in a "sink or swim" situation as the article says. You'll be surprised how far you can get in 3 months if you are in such a situation. Also, don't believe any crap when someone tells you "X language is hard". This is perhaps the biggest myth I have ever seen. It's only hard if you think it is, and if you try to learn everything by rules and flashcards, which native speakers don't generally do. You can also try to make anything look hard that actually isn't. I find people in the US especially love to talk about how hard Chinese (and also Japanese and a few others) is but it isn't particularly different in difficulty than English or any other major world language. 5-year-olds can handle it, they just weren't told it's hard, they just needed to speak it if they wanted to argue and get their stolen pencil back.

kevinstubbs 5y ago
Any grammar is surmountable, but the languages that are truly hard are ones which have sounds or consonant clusters that your native language(s) don't. For example, learning Georgian as a native English/Italian speaker.. I could hardly even say basic words like "forest" (t'ke), "water" (tsqali), or "frog" (baqaqi) for the first few months. Look up the ყ letter, or listen and judge for yourself ბაყაყი წყალში ყიყინებს (the frog cries in the water) Hear natives speak it: https://forvo.com/word/%E1%83%91%E1%83%90%E1%83%A7%E1%83%90%E1%83%A7%E1%83%98/#ka https://forvo.com/word/%E1%83%91%E1%83%90%E1%83%A7%E1%83%90%... The one by shaburgiorgi is the most faithfully enunciated, while the others are what you would more likely hear casually/in conversation.
- dheera 5y ago
  > I could hardly even say If I may take the liberty to nitpick, that's a thing only an adult would say. A 5-year-old would just try.
  - kevinstubbs 5y ago
    That's a pretty unforgiving interpretation of what I wrote. Sounds came out of my mouth and people didn't understand what I was trying to say.
    - dheera 5y ago
      > Sounds came out of my mouth and people didn't understand what I was trying to say. Right, and as a 5 year old who wants your pencil back, you find another way to say it. If you don't know how to say "backpack" you say "bag". If you don't know how to say "foyer" you say "that place near the door". If you don't know how to say "pencil" you say "pen" or "writing stick". I realize it was an unforgiving interpretation. That was directed at the topic and not you personally. That's kind of my point. If you have a sink-or-swim attitude or situation you will learn it.
  - bsder 5y ago
    > A 5-year-old would just try. And a 5 year old would be cut a lot of slack for screwing it up. One of the issues with learning anything as an adult is that other adults are viciously unaccommodating. Foreign language learning turns that up to 11. Personally, I think this is the primary issue with adult learning. You have to be a very strong personality to have an intrinsic motivation that will cause you to put in long hours of work because you aren't going to get any external motivation for a very long time.

tarkin2 5y ago

There's not one method, because there's not one type of brain, not one type of learner.

bobthepanda 5y ago
Also, not one type of language.
vimy 5y ago
That’s a myth.

davidzweig 5y ago

There are different valid approaches, but there are certainly techniques that are ineffective; I think the popular "just do something" advice is harmful as it suggests all approaches are equally valid. I think it's possible to develop an intuition about whether an activity is more or less beneficial for your learning. Here's the best advice I could write down: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/66myn1/a_short_guide_to_independent_language_learning/?st=jlmshg74&sh=263cd3fb https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/66myn1/a_...

hiptobecubic 5y ago
There is a huge gap between "something is better than nothing" and "all things are equally good."
- davidzweig 5y ago
  'Language learning advice is conflicting,' 'Stick with a language, Whatever your method is, don't give up.' 'If your method doesn't work for you, change it.' I agree with the author. I think a lot of language learning advice is of poor quality, or it's hard to establish complex behaviours simply from reading an article. It's hard to write stuff down that you could expect to improve the odds of the student. Learning a language on your own is a kind of a funny hack, it's like learning to program without access to a computer, it can be done but it needs specific techniques. I make software for learning languages, writing proper instructions for using it is something that I consider difficult and I don't attempt it. :)

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago

Okay, but can't we objectively experimentally compare them? Take a class of 20 undergrads, have them use method X. Have the next class use Y. Repeat with as many methods as needed, with as many classes/semesters as needed, control for as many confounding factors as you can. Publish papers, reproduce. Is the noise floor too high, the effectiveness too close, or am I missing something? (Yes, probably that last one; if so, what?)

BossingAround 5y ago
I think that the field is fraught with a number of caveats, just off the top of my head: * "I learned a language" is a very poorly defined statement. It's really difficult to quantify. The EU tried with their language levels [1], but it's still a mess. So you get a person that says "I speak 15 languages! Just follow my method forehead!" while an academic says "this person speaks two languages barely, and makes noises in the rest." "I know a language" means different things for different people, depending on one's motivation to learn a language. Do you want to book a hotel room? Do you want to read a newspaper? Do you want to read Crime and Punishment in the original? Note that, for example, reading a newspaper is significantly easier in Tagalog, which uses a mixture of English and Filipino, than in Chinese, which requires you to know around 3 thousand Chinese characters. * Learning a language is highly influenced by your native language. If you take 20 undergrads, you might conclude that "to learn language X as a native speaker of Y, the best method seems to be Z." Then, other papers will likely dispute your definition of "learning" (see previous point). * Learning a language is highly dependent on your motivation. If you take a class of 20 people, their motivation to learn a language X is going to be all over the place. Learning a language is always really difficult, even when a language is deemed easy (like Spanish). Most people will drop off unless they are really driven to learn the language. Long story short, I don't think it's as easy to apply the scientific method. There's a reason why we don't have a matrix of "if you're a German speaker wanting to learn Russian, here's the optimal syllabus for you." On the flip side, I do think we can say something about language learning. For example, apps like Duolingo are not that useful. I don't think that's a very controversial statement in the language learning community. Similarly, just moving to a country won't do anything special for you (other than utterly isolate you). For example, you won't pick up any Japanese from your one-room 40-squared-feet apartment in downtown Tokyo alone. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages#Common_reference_levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_R...

presentation 5y ago

There is definitely a difference in the quality of content you consume though, which is a bummer - new language learners don’t know what’s good. I just ran across a YouTube channel [1] which if I had known about it when I was starting Japanese, would have probably prevented me from getting confused about a great deal of things. But there really is no substitute for persistence, regardless of technique. [1] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06... (though her pronunciation is very unnatural, her explanations are spot on)