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The Seven Deadly Sins – The Secret to Language Learning

The Seven Deadly Sins – The Secret to Language Learning
Posted by Steve Kaufmann on September 29th, 2009
This is my confiteor, my confession, my mea culpa. I speak 10 languages and I have achieved this result by sinning. What’s more, I have not committed just any old sin. I have indulged in the seven deadly sins.
1. Extravagance
I love showing off my languages. I am learning Russian. If I hear Russian speakers, I will immediately accost them and inflict my grammatically incorrect Russian on them. I even do the same with Korean, which I speak even less well. Don’t even mention the languages that I speak well. If I detect the slightest accent, I attack. I am a shameless show-off. Yet I am totally unconcerned about the accuracy of my language. I do not care if I am full of mistakes. If they do not understand me it is their fault. I just want to show off. Look at me! I can communicate in your language! Shameless!
2. Gluttony
I am a glutton, a pig. When I am studying a language I just cannot get enough of it. I download podcasts, audio books, whatever I can find. I listen over and over to the same stuff at first. Then I look for more interesting things to listen to and read. I watch movies in the language. I listen when I do the dishes, or even when standing in line at the store. I am like a person obsessed. I cannot get enough. I just stuff myself with the language. Even if my brain is starting to get indigestion, I just cannot help myself. I just gulp down the language.
3. Greed
I am acquisitive. I like to acquire words. I cannot resist increasing my vocabulary. If I learn 100 words, I want to learn 100 more. If my word count is up to 1,000, all I think of is learning the next 1,000. My Russian word count i now up to 50,000 (granted there are so many forms of the words in Russian that this is probably like 10,000 words in English), but I am not satisfied. I want more. My greed has no limits.
4. Sloth
At heart, though, I am lazy. I cannot bring myself to do drills, to study grammar, to do all the exercizes that I find in language books. I won’t attend a language class. I am just too lazy. I just want to stuff myself with the language. I will occasionally leaf through a small grammar book, but only now and then, and in a half-hearted manner. Often, I no sooner start doing some grammar study, when I just give up and go back to my iPod or my book, and consume more language.
5. Wrath
I get angry easily. When I buy a language book and it is 90% full of explanations and drills, and only 10 % text, I get angry. When I read or hear detailed explanations about aspects of the language, explanations that I do not understand, and will not remember and will not be able to use, I just get angry. When I review a declension table and cannot remember anything, I just throw up my hands. If I see people stuck at the computer with a learning system full of pictures and multiple choice questions, I sneer. When a language book describes things about the culture which do not interest me, I throw the book on the floor. I just want to be allowed to wallow in what interests me, gorging myself on my favourite content.
6. Envy
Often I hear non-native speakers carrying on conversations in Russian or Portuguese, or some other language that I am learning. They speak well, with accurate grammar, rich vocabulary and a natural accent. They speak so much better than I do. How I envy them. It is not a nasty envy. I am not saddened by their success. I am encouraged by it. I gladly tell them that I envy them and that I wish I had their ability. Of course I think I can acquire it, and then their ability will also be mine.
7. Pride
I am proud. I am proud of the way I learn languages. I am so proud that I believe that my way is the only way to learn. I do not believe that some people are just “good at languages”. I do not believe that some people are auditory learners and others visual learners. I think that everyone is a learner, and everyone can learn by listening, by reading and by speaking. Maybe those people who do not succeed in language learning are too prudish, to uptight, maybe too moral. Maybe more learners need to get more sinful in their approach to language learning.

About the author: Steve Kaufmann is a former Canadian diplomat, who has had his own company in the international trade of forest products for over 20 years. Steve is the founder and CEO of LingQ.com an online language learning system and Web 2.0 community. Steve speaks ten languages, having recently learned Russian at LingQ. Steve maintains a blog on language learning,and has written a book on language learning called The Linguist, A Language Learning Odyssey.

Language learning is like falling in love

Language learning is like falling in love
Posted by Steve Kaufmann on May 29, 2007
This evening I have to give a short talk in Japanese to about 30 members of the Japan-Canada Chamber of Commerce. I am a Director of this Chamber, which consists mostly of recent Japanese immigrants to Canada who are involved in their own businesses here. Here is what I intend to say in Japanese.

Language learning is like falling in love. In fact you have to be in love to learn a language well. I mean in love with the language. You have to have a love affair with the language. You do not have to marry the language. You can have an affair and then move on to another language after a period of time. But while you are learning the language you have to be in love with it. And you will learn faster if you are faithful to the language while you are studying it.

Just as when you are in love, you want to and need to spend as much time as possible with the object of your love. You want to hear its voice and read its thoughts. You want to learn more about it, the many words and phrases that it uses to express itself. You think of the language wherever you are. You start to observe the object of your love closely. You notice all the little things it does, you become familiar with its peculiar behaviour patterns. You breathe it. You hear its voice. You feel it. You get to know it better and better, naturally.

Just as in a love affair, there are things about the object of your love that you do not like. You ignore these. You only think about the things that you love. You do not question the object of your love. You just accept it. You do not ask why. You do not ask why it behaves a certain way. You do not seek to understand the secrets to its structure. You just want to be with it, and even to imitate it, the highest form of appreciation.

Loving a language is a one-sided love affair. You love the language. It does not love you back. But the good thing is that it is not jealous of you, of your other previous love affairs. It really does not care if you carry on another love affair at the same time. But, as with people, doing so can create problems…..The language does not criticize you. You can use it however you want, as long as you enjoy yourself.

You are not jealous of other people who love the language you love. In fact you like to meet people who love the language you love. It is a lot less bothersome to love a language than to love a person, Because the love of the language is its own reward. You do not care what the language thinks of you. You are enjoying your affair with the language and do not expect anything in return. As long as you have that relationship, you will learn and improve in the language.

If you just use a language without loving it, you will not improve. If the goal is only to get a better job, or to pass a test, you will not improve. People are the same way. You cannot have a love affair with someone just to get a better job, although……….

This has been my approach. So when I learn a language I spend most of my initial time just listening and reading and building up my words and phrases. I just want to get to know the language, enjoy its personality and get used to it. I do not want anyone to question me, or explain my love to me. I do not want to speak in the language before I have really gotten to know the language, because I know that I will not do justice to my love. I only speak in the language when I want to, when I am ready.

I practice what is known as the "silent period" approach to language learning. Right now I am learning Russian and have been doing so for one year. I read and listen to many different kinds of content, including simple stories, podcasts and Tolstoy. I love it. I do not yet speak Russian. I could if I wanted to. I have been using the latest version of our language learning system, LingQ, which enables people to learn any language they want.

If any of you are interested in having a love affair with a language, send me an email. I will give you one month free use of our language learning system, or should I say language loving system.
Source:
http://www.lingq.com/ 

Beliefs

Beliefs

Hello, welcome to this blog. This one is called “Beliefs.” Let’s get started.

Beliefs are another important part of managing your psychology, of strengthening your psychology so that you will learn English or anything in fact, much faster. And there are two kinds of beliefs to general categories of beliefs. Limiting and empowering.

Let’s talk about limiting beliefs first. Limit is something that stops you. It’s like a boundary. It stops you from going ahead. So a limiting belief is a belief that stops you from improving, a belief that stops you from getting better. And I’d say most English students have limiting beliefs and many English students have very strong limiting beliefs. I call these beliefs English trauma and I got that name from a few of my students. They would tell me “AJ, I can’t speak English well because I have English trauma.”

What is English trauma? What is that, what are they talking about? Well, trauma means some kind of injury, some kind of hurt. Emotional hurt, deep emotional hurt. So what they mean is that they had some very negative, painful experiences with English in the past. In other words, when they were in school in English classes, even as adults going to other English schools, they had very negative experiences. And all these negative experiences have created some very negative beliefs, some very limiting beliefs. For example, they say “I am not good at English.” Well, that’s a belief. It may be true, it may not be true. But it’s an opinion, it’s a belief that they have.

Another belief, a very common belief, “English is difficult.” Or, English is complicated. Well, that’s just a belief. For me English is very easy, because I’m a native speaker, just like your native language for you is very easy. Tomoe can speak Japanese fluently because she’s Japanese, so I might say “Japanese is difficult,” and she would say “No, Japanese is super easy.” These are just beliefs that come from our experiences. The problem is these limiting beliefs limit us. They in fact do limit us. They stop us from getting better. They cause a lot of problems for us as students, as learners. I have them, too. As I try to learn Japanese, for example, I have a lot of these limiting beliefs I realize. I think “Oh, Japanese is so difficult.” Japanese is complicated, just look at the writing system. It’s so different from English.

And these beliefs hurt my motivation. They lower my energy, and in fact they’re wrong. They’re not true. Japanese does not have to be difficult; it does not have to be complicated. A small child, even a small American child, could learn Japanese very effortlessly, very easily. And the reason is, the number one reason is, they don’t have the limiting beliefs. They can sing songs and play games and enjoy the language, and they’ll learn it so quickly, so easily, they’ll say “Japanese is easy.” Well, it’s the same with English with you. You learned in a very painful, difficult way in the past. And so you developed, you created these beliefs in your head. English is difficult. English is boring. English is painful. I’m not good at English. I’ll never speak excellent English. These are just beliefs.

So how do you eliminate these beliefs? Okay, you have these beliefs. You know they’re negative, you know they’re not helping you. But we have to figure out, how can we get rid of the limiting beliefs?

That’s the first step, you have to weaken them. You have to make them weaker and weaker and weaker. You have to cut them down. Well beliefs get stronger from references. And reference is just an experience or a memory. Sometimes it’s just something you imagine, actually. But it’s a specific experience or a specific imagination, a specific moment that makes the belief stronger or weaker.

So, for example, you have this idea “English is painful and boring.” And when you think of this belief, where does it come from? Well, you think of all these past experiences. You think of the time in middle school where your teacher corrected your mistake and you felt terrible. And you think of maybe the bad grades you got on the test or all the red marks on your English papers. And you start adding more and more and more memories, more of these negative experiences, these negative references. And if you get enough, you will develop a very, strong, deep, powerful belief “English is difficult. English is painful. I’m not good at English.” So to weaken these, you just have to question the references.

You have to question the experiences. Take the power away from the experiences. And an easy way to do that is just to ask questions about them. For example, let me ask this question. Your past English schools, were they excellent? Were they just fantastic English schools with fantastic, amazing, fun, positive English teachers? Did you have a great time every day? Well, I know for most of you the answer is no. So that’s interesting, so if your schools were not excellent, maybe the school was the problem. Maybe it’s not you. Maybe your English is not great because you did not go to great schools. And did those schools that you went to, or the books you used, did they use proven methods?

Did they use research based methods? Did they know a lot about the research about English learning, English teaching? Did they only use the best methods? Or did they just use the textbook that everybody else uses? Well, I know from my experience as a teacher, most schools just use the same textbooks. They don’t know why. Maybe the boss tells them “We must use this book.” But they’re not choosing the very, very best methods. They’re not choosing the very, very best books. And so maybe the reason you believe English is difficult is because you used difficult methods in the past, or your teachers did. Maybe you think English is boring because in the past you used boring methods. You went to boring schools. You had boring teachers. Maybe English isn’t the problem. Maybe it was these past experiences. Maybe it was the way you did it or where you did it. Ask yourself these questions. Think about them in detail. Weaken your limiting beliefs. Challenge your limiting beliefs.

Another question, in school did you learn deeply? For example, did you take one chapter in your book and learn it for a long time so that you totally mastered it, so that you knew it completely, 100% and never forgot it? Probably not, most schools I have seen and the ones I have taught in, it’s quite the opposite. The teachers go very, very, very quickly. You learn one chapter in your book, boom, after one week on to the next one, and the next one. Each chapter has so many new words, so much new grammar.

For example, my experience with Spanish in high school and university, I took Spanish, I’ve had a total of maybe two years of Spanish, but I forgot it all. Because we never learned deeply. They just tried to make us learn as many words as possible, a lot of words, a lot of words, a lot of grammar, very, very fast. And then, of course, I forgot everything. How about you? Did you learn deeply in your schools? If not, maybe that was one of the problems. Maybe English feels difficult because you never learned deeply. Maybe English is not the problem.

Finally, did you learn with a grammar translation method? Did you study a lot of grammar rules? Did you take a lot of tests? Did you feel good about that? Again, maybe the method was the problem. Maybe the school is the problem, not English.

So think about these questions and think about them every day. Think about them a lot. I want you to think about these questions again and again and again. And really be honest about it. And start to destroy these limiting beliefs. Get rid of them. They’re wrong. English is not difficult. English is not painful. English is not boring. It’s only a belief. It’s only a past experience. You can change that now and in the future. So let’s do that.

Let’s talk now about empowering beliefs, the positive side. So to empower, the verb, to empower means to make stronger. It means to give power to another person. Or in this case, it means the beliefs give you power. An empowering belief is a belief that makes you feel powerful, that gives you power. That’s the kind of beliefs you want and you need to choose them.

You must decide which beliefs will make you stronger. For example, here’s an empowering belief. You can replace your old limiting belief, add this one instead. You can say “My brain is a natural language learning machine.” Because that’s what all of the scientific research shows, our brain naturally learns languages. It is designed to learn language. It should be easy. It should be effortless. It should feel good. You learned your native language that way. It wasn’t difficult was it? English was easy for me to learn, because I did it in a totally natural way. And the more naturally I tried to learn Japanese, for example, or Spanish, the easier it feels. So this is a new belief and you should write it down, think about it. Write down this idea, this belief “My brain is a natural language learning machine.” Think about it every day. Decide to choose that belief.

Here’s another belief you might decide to choose “English can be fun and effortless.” English can be fun and effortless. That’s an empowering belief and it’s also true. You can think of a lot of examples for this. Some of these mini-stories you’re listening to, right? They’re fun. They’re stupid, sometimes. They’re crazy, sometimes. But they’re not serious. English can be fun and effortless. That’s an empowering belief you want to choose and you want to remember it every day.

And to make these beliefs stronger, you need experiences. Remember, you need references; you need examples that prove the belief. So I’m going to give you some examples and you can find more. Go find people who speak English very well. Or maybe even that have learned another language very well. I’ll give you one of my favorite examples, Steve Kaufman of The Linguist speaks, I believe, twelve languages now. I want you to find these people and look at their beliefs. I’ll tell you some of his beliefs because he’s a friend, I’ve talked to him a number of times, and Steve believes, for example, that language learning is easy and effortless. That’s his belief.

He’s a native English speaker, he speaks Cantonese, he speaks Mandarin, he speaks Japanese, and he speaks Russian. These are all, supposedly, difficult languages. For him they’re not difficult. They’re easy and effortless. That’s a very strong belief he has. Another belief he has is that you must learn language naturally and you must focus on meaning. So in other words, he doesn’t focus on the grammar. He’s not focusing on boring textbooks. He’s reading interesting things that he enjoys. He’s listening to interesting things that he enjoys. So, for him, language learning is interesting.

What’s really interesting for me is that these are the same beliefs that all of my best students have. They all have these same ideas. The best students, the ones who learn the fastest, the ones who have the best test scores, the ones with the best speaking, they all believe these things. They all believe that English is fun, interesting and effortless. They all believe that language learning is natural. They all believe that they should focus on the meaning, not on the grammar and the little pieces of the language. So if you want to be like these successful people, you need to think like them. You need to have the same beliefs as them.

So here’s what I want you to do. Here’s your homework. This is the last thing, the last part of this lesson. What I want you to do is write down two, three, four empowering beliefs, beliefs that give you power about English. Maybe “My brain is a natural language learning machine.” Maybe “English can be fun and effortless.” Maybe “I love English.” I don’t know; write down, two, three, four empowering beliefs about English. And every day you’re going to do an incantation. That’s a good word, that’s a new word, incantation. An incantation is a phrase or sentence that you say again and again. It has almost a magic idea, it comes from magic.

An incantation is a magical sentence. It’s a sentence, if you say the sentence something will happen. That’s where it comes from. But for us an incantation is just a belief you are going to repeat again and again and again every day. So here’s what you’re going to do. For example “English can be fun and effortless.” You’re going to say that out loud every day while you’re walking along and you’re doing your posture. And you’re breathing and you’re smiling. Well, you’re going to add one more thing. As you walk, as you’re getting ready for the lesson, you’re going to repeat this out loud. You’re going to say “English can be fun and effortless.” You’re going to say it with some emotion. Say it with feeling so you’re smiling, you’re breathing deep, you’re moving your body, you have good posture and now you’re also saying these strong beliefs. English can be fun and effortless. You repeat it again. English can be fun and effortless. And then you say it again. English can be fun and effortless.

You can do this in your room and its fine. You can do it outside and make everyone look at you and think you’re crazy. Why not? It’s better than feeling powerless, right? It’s better than being bored. I promise you will learn so much faster if you do this. So do these incantations every day just before you do a lesson. Get your body strong, peak emotional state, and then say these incantations. English can be fun and effortless. English can be fun and effortless. Now your body, your mind, your beliefs, they’re all together, very strong. Then you’re ready to learn.

Okay, that is the end of the story for “Beliefs.”

Top 5 Mistakes English Learners Make

“Top 5 Mistakes English Learners Make”
What are the most common mistakes that English learners make? Which mistakes do most English learners need to correct, in order to learn English much faster?

Here are the top 5 English Learning Mistakes:

1. Focusing On Grammar

This is the biggest, most common, and worst mistake. Research shows that grammar study, in fact, actually hurts English speaking ability. Why? Because English grammar is simply too complex to memorize and use logically.... and real conversation is much too fast.

You don’t have enough time to think, remember hundreds or thousands of grammar rules, choose the correct one, and then use it.

Your logical left-brain cannot do it. You must learn grammar intuitively and unconsciously, like a child. You do this by hearing a lot of correct English grammar- and your brain gradually and automatically learns to use English grammar correctly.

2. Forcing Speech

Both English students and teachers try to force speech before the learner is ready. The result is that most students speak English very slowly- with no confidence and no fluency. Forcing speech is a huge mistake. Don’t force speech. Focus on listening and be patient. Speak only when you are ready to speak- when it happens easily and naturally. Until then, never force it.
3. Learning Only Formal Textbook English

Unfortunately, most English students learn only the formal English found in textbooks and schools. The problem is- native speakers don’t use that kind of English in most situations.

When speaking to friends, family, or co-workers, native speakers use casual English that is full of idioms, phrasal verbs, and slang. To communicate with native speakers, you must not rely only on textbooks.. you must learn casual English.

4. Trying To Be Perfect

Students and teachers often focus on mistakes. They worry about mistakes. They correct mistakes. They feel nervous about mistakes. They try to speak perfectly. No one, however, is perfect. Native speakers make mistakes all the time. You will too. Instead of focusing on the negative- focus on communication.

Your goal is not to speak “perfectly”, your goal is to communicate ideas, information, and feelings in a clear and understandable way. Focus on communication, focus on the positive. You will automatically improve your mistakes in time.

5. Relying On English Schools

Most English learners rely totally on schools. They think the teacher and the school are responsible for their success. This is never true. You, the English learner, are always responsible. A good teacher can help, but ultimately you must be responsible for your own learning.

You must find lessons and material that are effective. You must listen and read every day. You must manage your emotions and remain motivated and energetic. You must be positive and optimistic. No teacher can make you learn. Only you can do it!

While these mistakes are very common, the good news is that you can correct them. When you stop making these mistakes, you change the way you learn English. You learn faster. Your speaking improves. You enjoy learning English.

Good luck... you can do it!

This article was featured on Yahoo News.

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