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0:04
I'd like to ask each other about our early experiences. Sure. Okay. Why don't you... ...in French? What happened to me in French? All right. Okay. That's a good start.
0:14
Okay.
0:16
I'd like to
0:18
... yeah, go ahead.
0:21
Hello?
0:24
Okay. I think we're live. So we have the two Steves here. that's right. We have the two Steves. We have Dr. Steven Krashen, who is to me, the person who has explained the world, the sort of snake pit of Pandora's box of how you learn languages. And he's reduced it to something that's very simple, which con... basically confirms all of my experience in language learning. Dr. Krashen the language acquisition hypothesis, we're gonna get into that.
0:56
Very happy to have this opportunity to speak with you.
0:59
And I'm very happy to be here with my language consultant and therapist, Steve Kaufmann. Who's helped me in so many ways. Let me tell you. Well, that's very kind of you, you know, you were saying just before we went live here, that it would be interesting to review our early experiences in learning languages. What, what did you have in mind? Well, let me give you mine and then you'll respond appropriately. Okay. Um, I grew up middle class privileged in the, in Chicago and my, and I
1:28
heard Yiddish all around, but nobody expected me to understand any of it. And I didn't now I can ... yiddish that comes later. Okay. That's another, that's another story. A very happy one. Um, uh, but I took French in high school. I got a passing grade in French from my kind teacher under the condition that I never take any more French courses at that high school, cuz I was such a terrible student. All right. I had no interest in it. It was boring. I went to Hebrew school. It was beyond boredom.
1:58
Then things happened. My mom set it up. So I would go on a tour, a bicycle tour, a youth host tour of Europe, down the Rhine Valley with a bunch of other kids. Really nice. We went to a youth host in Switzerland and went to a party, nice kids everywhere. I sat around and listened to a conversation, basically being, uh, managed by one young man who spoke to some kids in French, some kids in German and spoke to us in English. And I thought that is so cool.
2:31
I wanna be like him when I grow up, that really changed it. And I decided on the spot that I would get good at languages. Uh, when the Peace Corps tour was over, I went to Paris. The advice of one of our leaders of the group, I went to the Alliance Française, took a couple of weeks of French, got much better. Came back, took French, took German. And then the big breakthrough, my major was music, piano and my piano teacher, Malcolm Bilson, who is wonderful, um, suggested I go to
3:00
Vienna and study with his teacher. We had a terrible ... we had a horrible argument, like one weekend and I, I stopped with her, but I stayed in Vienna. My parents were so nice and so generous. Took German classes. Got really good in German. That was the real reason I got there. And this is the end of this, uh, little segment. Um, everything I did was right. I had a group of friends in those days. English was not the lingua franca.
3:31
You spoke, we spoke German and a lot of them were better than I was. We recommended reading to each other, which books were good and gradually native speakers who liked to hang out with foreigners joined the group. That was a wonderful, perfect immersion experience that got me going. After that was the, oh, I'll just mention three good things that happened in Ethiopia that pushed me along: joined the Peace Corps so I wouldn't have to go to Vietnam and avoided the draft.
3:59
Uh, I learned to speak Amharic which was a lot of fun, cuz people were so friendly. Uh, and I met my wife there. She joined the Peace Corps cuz she was an idealist and wanted to help people. So, and we're still married 55 years later and it's still wonderful. So these are good things that happened and I discovered coffee. Okay. Aha. Okay.
4:24
Okay. Steve, tell us your story. Well, with specific reference to learning languages, first of all, the number of things that you talked about there, I can also confirm, first of all, uh, uh, you know, at school, I, I, unlike you, I did get good grades in my French, uh, but I couldn't speak. And, uh, and that was typical, like in Canada, in the French language, other than French immersion, which is a recent phenomenon in Canada, I dunno, 10,
4:50
20 years people in the regular French stream don't learn to speak French. The better students get better grades. The poorer students get poorer grades. If one of the students has a Francophone, Francophone parent, they're probably gonna do better. Uh, but by and large, they don't learn in the classroom.
5:07
What happened to me was I went to McGill university. We had a, I took a course in French civilization. We had a professor, Maurice Rabotan, who was a phenomenal professor, not because he forced French at us, but because he made the world of French civilization history so interesting to me that I got totally motivated and living in Montreal, even though Montreal in those days was two thirds French, one third English. And if you lived in the English part of Montreal, you might
5:35
just as well be in Chicago. Uh, but if you want to access the French language, there's radio, there's newspapers, there's Montreal University there's a whole bunch of things that you can do, including watching, you know, movies. And, and eventually I went to France. So it, it was my motivation to sort of my interest in the language and, uh, the other thing too, uh, you mentioned that you, uh, met your wife in a way related to your interest in the world and so forth.
6:03
And so did I, uh, I worked for the Canadian government. I was sent to Hong Kong to learn Mandarin, Chinese, and I met my wife in Hong Kong and we've been married for 53 years. So we're catching up to you. Uh, but certainly I discovered then that all of the instruction about the niceties of grammar and particularly when the teachers select what you're gonna read, so mostly you're not interested in what they push at you. And in those days there wasn't so much in the way of, you
6:31
know, there were no MP3 files. There weren't even cassette players. So there was very little listening. It was mostly reading with a long list, word list and, and things that were of no interest. Once you get actually motivated in what you're reading about, it gets back to your compelling input. Then you don't notice you're being carried along by your interest in the subject matter or your interest in communicating with other people and the language just starts to pile in.
6:58
So that, that has been my experience, uh, with French.
7:03
Oh boy. Yeah. So when did the change come? Well, like change be came very quickly. See, one of the things I think is although I'm a critic of, um, school language instruction. In fact, if you spent 10 years passively doing stuff in French despite the effort... oh, the, the interesting thing is I went to a, a football game. We have the Montreal Alouettes and, uh, we had a problem with our ticket and I had to explain this to the usher who was a Francophone.
7:32
And so I had to kind of find some French words at age 16 or 17 and I still remember to this day that all I had was words. I didn't have grammar. The teachers had only taught grammar. And all I could say was ... you know, like, I couldn't produce the grammar, but what I did have was words. And so I'm, I remained to this day convinced that the best sort of way to evaluate your, at least your potential in the language is how many words do you know?
8:03
You know, how many words do you know, even passive. So, uh, but yeah, but eventually of course, once I got really interested and I watched movies and I listened to radio and then I went to France and I had to do all my schooling in French and write essays in French and answer oral questions in French. Of course then it just, it just cascades.
8:21
Yeah.
8:23
There you have it. Very good. I have a question that one of our members at LingQ put on our forum. And unfortunately Eric said he was gonna find the name of this professor, but there was a professor who did some work, which showed, purported to show that if you start speaking too early, before you have 2000 hours of listening or some number, then you might develop some bad pronunciation habits. Uh, Have you any thoughts on, you know, when is the right time to start speaking?
8:53
That whole business and people I'm sure they've asked you this before. How do we transition from acquiring the language, getting the language, getting, getting the brain used to the language. How do we get from there to output?
9:06
Okay. I can give a partial answer to that. I don't know the complete answer. And that's a good research question for eager scholars, I think, but there is a problem with early speaking and I'll tell you my story. Um, we used to live down the street from a family that had a daughter the same age as our daughter at the time around five years old, which is nearly 50 years ago. Okay. And I used to get the, we'd get the girls together to play.
9:32
And one day it was my, my, um, responsibility to pick up both girls after an hour, bring her to my house because the mom had to go off and take her Spanish course at the local community college. So I went up, I said, okay, girls, let's go. She said, wait, I have to take my pill. She goes in the bathroom takes this pill. And again, we are good family friends. I said, what was that? She said, well, today Valium, today would be Prozac, anti-anxiety medication.
10:03
So again, relying on our close friendship, I said, well, why are you taking Valium? French class, it freaks me out. And I said, what is it about French class that makes you so nervous? When the teacher calls on me having to talk before I'm ready. I interpret that as having to use stuff you've consciously learned and not being able to work on... to use what you have acquired. I thought this is something. I looked at all the research found more and it's all there.
10:31
One of the biggest anxiety producing things is having to talk before you're ready in a language class. Now there's some interesting anthropological research that backs this up. A guy named Sorenson went to the Amazon Valley and looked at a group
10:46
of 10,000 people on the border between two countries who spoke like 24 languages, not all related. 10,000 is not that much. You go to a football game there're 10,000 people in the stadium. That's not very much, but, and so this is really not a big number.
11:05
They were all pretty good in languages. They picked up mommy's language, daddy's language, language of their friends, gradually the language of all the local lingua franca and were heavily monolingual. So Sorenson interviewed them. How do you do it? We don't try to say anything. We don't force it unless we think we're ready. We just wait, we just listen. And then it comes. By the way in that culture, you are forbidden from correcting anybody for doing anything. Okay.
11:35
Other studies have found the same thing. We go to another country and we just stay there, be with the people until we can hear the language, which means understand it. They say for them consistent results, it takes a year or two before you're comfortable. We can actually, I think that's true in the real environment where you don't have extra support.
11:55
We can do better. We have language classes. We can give people comprehensible input right away in a good language class, which is what we're supposed to do. So that backs up the point, the reluctance with early speaking, it could give you a bad accent. I don't know, let's find out, but it's the fear, the, uh, discomfort of having to produce before you're ready.
12:18
Uh, and, and I would add in my experience, I am more say intimidated, say I have an online lesson with a tutor. It bothers me more when I don't understand what the other person is saying. Uh, the fact that I stumble, especially if it's with a tutor, so you're in a protected environment, that's normal. It's, it's, it's mildly annoying. That words that I have been reading and listening to, and I'm sure I know the meaning of, and I've gone over it many times and I get in front of my
12:48
tutor and I cannot find those words. Those words are just not available to me. But if I understand what the teacher tutor is saying, I'm happy. If on the other hand, I don't understand that's a very uncomfortable. Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm a firm believer in that, but again, so, so, so then to me, the question is like, how do you evaluate someone in the language in a way we shouldn't be evaluating others. We shouldn't even be evaluating ourselves.
13:14
We should just enjoy the process, but people do wanna know, well, am I B1 or B2? You know, am I gonna take, take the HSK or whatever TOEFL test? Uh, so do you measure it entirely on how well a person speaks or how well they pronounce or, or, uh, how well they understand and how do you even measure their level of comprehension? This it's, it's a big issue. Like how do you evaluate people? I have never been able to stay awake during a discussion of testing and
13:45
how we should do it, cuz just for the reasons you mentioned, it's an external, uh, task imposed on us and that's not what we're about. Right? Uh, just the tests pretty well agree with each other. So that's not a problem. So it's, it's a question I really would love to ignore. Can we go onto the next one? All right. No, I agree with you. I agree with that. I'll give you, I'll give you some results from testing, but I don't the best way of testing. Maybe self evaluation.
14:13
I also agree with you about, uh, correction and you often hear the argument, well, you know, mothers correct their kids when they start speaking, otherwise they'd never speak correctly. That's an... what's your reaction to that comment? Actually, they don't.
14:29
Of course they don't. Yeah, of course. They couldn't possibly correct every little mistake. And I've noticed this myself when I do give lessons in English, if I correct the other person, they continue making the same mistake right there in the very same lesson. So there's no impact. And, uh, I find it mildly annoying if I am corrected without having asked for corrections. So to me, the whole correction issue is I agree that's one of
14:52
your themes is that it just creates more, more tension, more Prozac. Also it is aimed at conscious learning.
15:00
Make a mistake. The child says I comes to school every day and you say, no, no. It's I come to school every day. The child is supposed to think, oh yeah, that S goes on the third person singular, not the first person... that you look at the studies. It does... it is a big disappointment. As a matter of fact, testing doesn't really work that well.
15:20
So what, uh, what has changed? I mean, I mentioned in my video that I first met you in 2003, by the way, I didn't know when it was that I first met you, but then I managed to find the Taiwan lectures book that I bought in Taipei, and it said they're published in 2003. And it just so happened that my book about my own experiences of language learning was also published in 2003. And I went to Taipei. I was at this language conference, the first one I'd ever attended.
15:49
And everybody was thronging into this lecture room to listen to Dr. Krashen and I didn't know who Dr Krashen was, but I remember that I was so impressed with the sort of element of simplicity that you brought to the process of language learning that I quickly had to buy your book. What has changed in language learning since 2003?
16:09
Not much.
16:12
And let me tell you why. Good question. Good question means when I'm prepared to answer, and this is one of them that I enjoy answer, uh, here and there yes, there have been changes. There's more comprehensible input than before, but by and large language teaching is the same as it was in 1945. Okay. There's been very little change and there are good reasons. Why, how do you find out about it? Well, you can buy books. They're, uh, written in, except for mine they're generally written
16:39
what we call tortured prose. Uh, you don't understand what the person's talking about. I can't get through them. Most of the time professional journals, the same way. They're also expensive. Um, my books, little commercial message, my books are all for free. I've put, if you follow me on, uh, Twitter, you find where to find them. I, you can download them for free cuz otherwise nobody's gonna read them. I can't afford them. Nobody else can afford them.
17:07
The solution to all this is what is called open access, getting our stuff out so real people can read it and do it. Otherwise, nothing is going to happen cuz nobody can afford this. That's why we came very little change. Oh, some positive change came for me a couple of years ago when the pandemic started and I offered to give free webinars free seminars over the next year, I did like 70 of them.
17:37
That helped no question. I can't do that anymore. Cause I can't afford it. Now I charge a little bit, not a lot. Okay. That was a commercial message. Um, but it's hearing about it under... once they hear it and understand it, it works. Getting the word out has been slow. And I don't know any magic way, cuz people are still writing incomprehensible papers.
17:59
But you know, obviously the way we learn languages, the way our brains learn languages, hasn't changed. That has to be the same, whether you're in the Amazon or wherever you are, uh, in so far as the awareness of comprehensible input, uh, in the language class, in the schools, my impression is that there's increasing awareness. The few times that I've attended the. What is it? ACE, American association of teachers, of whatever it is, AFT something.
18:30
Yeah. You and other proponents of comprehensible input are extremely popular amongst the teachers.
18:38
Amongst some teachers, the ones who've kept up with the research, and it's hard for teachers to keep up, cuz they're overwhelmed with work and the stuff is incomprehensible and expensive. Right. There have been some conversions and that'schelped. The big one of course is Steve Kaufmann. Okay. People have begun to understand the research. Bill van Patton has been extremely supportive. Earl Stevick in the old days, that's helped a lot, but it still is not part of common, common knowledge.
19:08
But, but I think another thing that has changed. So if I go back say 50 years or whatever, 55 years ago, when I was learning Mandarin Chinese, we had an open reel tape.
19:20
And there was not very much audio material available. And, um, there were books that were this thick that you could buy with, with, uh, things that you could read with, with vocabulary list. And I remember even 20, 30 years ago, I was approached by a local community college. Would I, you know, contribute towards a language lab and the budget for the language lab is like $50,000. And today I carry on my iPhone a quantity of audio and text material, obviously,
19:51
with, with LingQ, of course, with access to online dictionaries, with a tremendous range of functions and the ability to access individuals who are offering, you know, content comprehensible input in French, in, in Chinese. And all of that stuff now is available on my iPhone far more valuable than anything that was in that $50,000 language lab. So surely a lot has changed.
20:17
Yeah. We'll see. I haven't seen it yet, but we'll see. We'll hope that this gets around. Absolutely. So you're saying teachers are not taking advantage of this? Now it's the knowledge is not yet there. We're getting better. Now that you mention ACTFL let me introduce a little bit of gossip.
20:32
You and I were, and I will embarrass you. You and I were in an actual meeting once. And I was there and I met my former, uh, Chinese teacher, uh, ... and we, and, uh, she invited you to come to lunch with all the Chinese teachers.
20:48
I'll give you the word, they thought you were fantastic. Oh, they thought your ... was just excellent. And they loved what you said. So live with that. Okay. Okay. I'll try to live with it. Thank you.
21:01
But, uh, so, so the world, I think the, the, uh, One of the things that I find annoying say here in say in British Columbia, which is not New York or Chicago, schools will not offer certain languages because they say we don't have a qualified teacher or a certified teacher for that language. However, I've always felt if you had a person who was knowledgeable about how to use the resources on the internet, the teacher doesn't have
21:28
to be the one providing the language, doesn't have to be the one that we learn from explaining the language. You just need a, a guide, a coach, someone who can help so that if student A wants to learn Spanish and student B wants to learn Chinese or Tagalog or whatever, there are enough resources out there. Why is it that schools are hung up on having a certified certified teacher before they will offer that language at the school?
21:55
You have just recruited me to your team, that's a wonderful thing. I haven't thought about it because I'm not an iPhone person other than just basic needs and not into all this stuff. And it's all around me and I have pretty much ignored it. I, you just convinced me, this is a wonderful way of solving the problem I think. Yeah, there are so many resources out there now. And, and again, if I look at Canada where, you know, you must learn French. So here we are in British Columbia.
22:24
We're far away from French speakers god bless them on the other side of the country. So you're expecting kids to learn French out of some kind of civic duty because it's an official language. That's not very motivating. What if the kid, children, boys, girls wanna learn Spanish or Swahili. Why wouldn't you give them a victory in learning the language that they're motivated to learn? Once they've got one language under their belt,they will be in a better
22:53
position to learn French if at some point they become motivated to do so. And if they don't become motivated to learn French, they will not learn.
23:01
Absolutely correct. I think you're right. I'm I'm part of your team now. Can I tell you my only French joke that I managed to pull off? Is it, is it clean? More than. I was in, um, in, uh, Montreal with a group of Anglophones and we were in a French area and we went to dinner and this is my greatest triumph. Okay. I'm really proud of this. The waiter came over and said ... I raised my hand and I said
23:34
... the worst mistake you can ever make. He understood what you were saying. Of course he laughed. He thought it was great. Okay.
23:42
That was it. That's the story? That's it.
23:46
Why... but you know, that's a good example. So what? He understood what you were saying. You mean because you didn't say... I did it on purpose. Let me tell you. Okay. It was a joke and he liked it and he laughed. Okay. But, but the point is, even if you didn't do it on purpose, so what? And I get, like, if I do a video in some other language and I make a mistake, then there's always some people who jump on me and stuff like that. I mean like why, why does it matter?
24:15
Uh, I have never spoken to anyone in a foreign language, say in, in English where I felt, you know, I respected that person less because they made a mistake. This is a big, and this is again, I'm sorry to say all these nice things about you, but I have no choice. Um, when I had just read what, in one of your, uh, papers, you said, don't worry about making mistakes. Nobody cares. I'm more interested in what you say. I was in Mexico at a, at a one week session.
24:49
And I had lunch and dinner with, uh, Spanish teachersand we spoke Spanish the whole time and I thought, and I thought, gee, I'm gonna make mistakes. And then I had just read what you wrote and it hit. I had the best time ever, very little ..., mostly ... we gossiped the whole time.
25:10
Who was it who said, if you don't have anything good to say about someone, come sit next to me? Okay. It was so much fun. Thanks to you not worrying about mistakes. And it gets back to your point about the Prozac pill or whatever. And you've said this there's... unfortunately, I mean, people should go to your website and read your material, but there's so many quotable quotes, but this, this, what do you call it? The emo....
25:35
emotive filter, no. The affective filter affective filter. Uh, there's a formula I think, attributed to Lomb Kato that sort of has, you know, your attitude plus the time you spend with the language and divided by inhibition, frustration, all this negative stuff.
25:58
Obviously you wanna have a positive attitude, you wanna spend the time, but if you can reduce the inhibition, the fear you're only gonna learn faster. So why would you bring things in like, worrying about making mistakes, correcting people, all this other stuff? That's gonna increase that inhibition factor. And it's only gonna slow down because most of your mistakes, you will eventually correct. So why not let people enjoy themselves, enjoy the language?
26:24
While they're enjoying the language they're hearing the language, cuz they're interacting with other people they're using the language. Eventually they'll retrieve the right word. Eventually, not always, but more and more they'll speak correctly as we say, but why inhibit them? Lomb Kato also said language is one of the few things where knowing just a little bit is good.
26:47
If you do that in science, you make mistakes that's serious, but in language it's all right. It's positive. Don't be afraid. Exactly. If you, if you build a bridge, you better get it right. but when it comes to language, Um, and, and, and of course people often ask me, and if I speak in a language that I'm a bit rusty in and same with you, you're have a number of languages. You're not gonna be able to maintain them all at the same level. So then people like to, you know, come in and dump on you.
27:14
In my experience, even those languages that I have I'm unable really to speak now. I couldn't quickly bring that language up. Although at one time I was in the country using it, but still A, the time that I spent learning that language is so valuable. I had so much enjoyment. I learned about the country, the people, the culture, the history, and B, when I go back there to refresh that language, I will very quickly get back to the same level and I'll enjoy finding my old friends again.
27:45
So it's all positive. All positive. Yes. The method I use for getting back at them is of course pleasure reading And I'd like to tell a little story. I live about, well, 40 minutes from Los Angeles, right. And I used to go there about twice a week to see my grandchildren, still addicted. And of course, to pump iron with Arnold on the beach, all right. Arnold, really nice guy, by the way. Very... he seems to be, yeah, he seems to be. Oh my goodness. You go you're there doing your bench presses.
28:15
He says, oh, can I help you with that? Try it this way. You know, very pleasant. Um, anyway, what do you do driving 40 minutes, twice uh, the same day, twice? Um, radio used to be good. Uh, listen to the news, but now it's all Donald Trump. Music, they took the good music and put it on paid to listen stations. Yeah. So I stopped at the Santa Monica library. Okay. And I got audio books, books on disc books on tape. Uh, I couldn't do foreign languages cuz they only had English and
28:46
they didn't have classics. I'm a college professor. Okay. They had bestsellers. I listened to bestsellers. They're good. They're really good. And I got interested in everyday pop literature, self-selected and that has been our main thing in application. It's not the only way to do it. Um, my colleague ... MAson has developed a system, guided self-selected reading, after her students. This is English as a foreign language. After the students have heard lots of stories she tells and
29:17
makes comprehensible, they do self-selected reading from easy books. We used to call them graded readers. They're really comprehensible books and they're getting better, they're becoming literature. I read books by bill van Patton. I just mentioned him. My favorite author in Spanish. And you get better and better and you enjoy it. That's been a major breakthrough for me. That's an easy way of getting the language back when you've been a little bit rusty.
29:46
And I think, uh, I can't remember who, who it was said that when we go back over things that we've learned before, in our, in other words, we're reconnecting certain neural connections that were there before we actually end up learning those things.
30:01
Interesting. Yeah. That, that to relearn really consolidates your hold on that material. Um, the other thing is obviously people's tastes differ. I happen to like 19th century literature. So whether when I was learning Russian or even in a language that I speak well, like French, if I'm gardening and I can remember gardening and listening to French literature.
30:25
It elevates your control of the language. It's just listening to something. It becomes like music, even if you, I'm not gaining that many words, but I'm improving all the time improving when you use the language. When you listen, when you read, you're constantly, constantly improving.
30:40
And if you leave it, you might slip back a bit, but it's not the end of the world. Yeah, there, it's the problem of access. And you've just told me how to solve that. You know, electronic etc. Electronic is great. Like, and right now, just to talk a little bit about LingQ in my Persian learning we're now beta testing a system. This might I, in fact, I'd be interested in your, uh, reaction to this, but I, I go through these, uh, podcasts, which are on Iranian identity and Iranian
31:09
history, and this is quite serious stuff. And I do it sentence by sentence, uh, which is easier because if you're looking at a whole page a little more difficult and I can actually get that sentence translated if I, if I want to. But the big thing now is I can I get that sentence then jumbled, when I'm finished reviewing the words and I've listened to the thing, then I go there and it's a form of output. I find it surprisingly addictive. So I've got all these words and phrases jumbled.
31:40
I've gotta recreate that sentence.
31:43
It is. It's like trying to speak, but you're, you're looking at how the prepositions work. You're looking at how the, the verbs work you're looking at what you thought the word means. You kind of figured you knew what it meant when you heard the sentence and when you read the sentence, but now that you have to reconstruct that sentence, but you don't have to reconstruct it from zero. You don't have to write it all yourself. You don't even have to remember it.
32:07
All you have to do is go in there and start the first word, the second, maybe it's a phrase. It's just, it's a, it's amazing. It slows me down in terms of new vocabulary acquisition. Uh, but it is, it is surprisingly addictive. I don't know whether it, I think it does help my learning because I think it gives me a better sense of how the language works, even though it's, it's, it's less sort of intense in terms of vocabulary acquisition. So I, I just mentioned that to you.
32:37
What's your immediate reaction? Yeah, that is again, I'm learning things new. I have never thought of this, but I'm, I'm open about a good idea. Yeah, maybe once we get it out of beta, I can send it over to you and you can, you can have a look at it. Uh, it is amazing. Listen, I wonder if we have any questions. I wonder if Eric is in the background here, if, uh, any of the listeners have any questions? I don't see any in my chat box, but, uh, if people do have questions,
33:07
uh, don't uh, be shy here. Um, what do we see here, Eric? Hello Eric. Everyone. Hello? Okay. Maybe he'll give us some questions. Yeah. Okay.
33:19
I mean, I, it's very disappointing that, um, you know, I'll give you an example and again, I don't wanna be nasty to our federal government here in Canada, but they invested in a language learning app. Okay. To help Canadians learn artificial languages. First of all, they call it.
33:36
M A U R I L Mauril whatever. No one is gonna find that no one is gonna look for that. Call it Canadian official languages, if you want, people might find it. But then the whole thing is based on comprehension questions. So they work in conjunction with the CBC radio Canada, and they take certain TV programs and they prepare them. And then they prepare a bunch of comprehension, questions and activities surrounding those programs. That means that I cannot choose the radio program or, or TV
34:08
program that is of interest to me. I only can access whatever they have selected that they think should be of interest to me. And then they force me to do these comprehension questions and I hate comprehension questions. And there's a famous Brazilian educator who now passed away Rubem Alves, who said that nothing discourage the reader as much as being asked questions about what he or she has read. What's your reaction to comprehension questions? The same as yours. Absolutely horrible, horrible.
34:38
And it is true. Nothing would discourage me more than having to ask answer questions. That's why I like self-selected reading topics. I have questions in my mind all the time, because I'm a human being. Pleasure reading things you select has many of the answers, which is a segue for me to talk about another of my obsessions not just about reading itself and reading fiction. In a nutshell, yes, it's good for language. We know that people who read more have better spelling, grammar, all that
35:07
stuff, bigger vocabulary write better. They also know more people who read fiction, self selected fiction, know more about everything. It's fabulous. This is an argument for good libraries and self-selected reading, et cetera.
35:25
Finally, people who read more, have more understanding of others, more empathy for the rest of the human race. So there are some people who really need to read more. Okay. I agree with you. And furthermore research shows and I, but I can't find that bit of research right now, but the best sort of... to track how successful people are socially, uh, academically, uh, you know, professionally more than the number of years spent in school or university or postgraduate it's how well they read.
36:05
It's even more interesting than that. Okay, I'll take that and move it along. Big study was done. Uh, Stanovich in Cunningham, one of the best studies ever done in reading, uh, they gave people a test of second year college students. They gave them a test of general knowledge, kind of what you should know when you graduate secondary school and had a variety of areas. You know, science, current events, social studies, uh, practical stuff, technology,
36:30
uh, the best predictor of course, was familiarity with popular literature.
36:37
Which included magazines. TV was a big zero. What didn't help was not a predictor how well you read and your grades in school. Hmm. Wow. So doing your homework didn't really count. It's your pleasure reading. It gives you general more overall knowledge. Whoa. I have a question here from someone who asks, if you cannot speak to a tutor, is shadowing talking to yourself ideal?
37:09
Any thoughts?
37:11
I have no idea. It's not, none what... uh, I kind of doubt it, but I'm speaking just from what I feel, not from any research on it. We do it all the time. We can't help it. I don't know if it, if, if it does any good or not. The, uh, shadowing is this technique whereby while you're listening to something, you try to sort of talk along, you know, repeat what you hear. I have found that I am rarely able to continue doing that. I can do it for a while. I gave it a shot.
37:44
And, and if the material is, is essentially easy enough, like are many stories at LingQ where I'm familiar with story, then I can do it. But if it's something that's of interest to me, if I'm listening to something genuinely interesting, I don't want to confuse myself by trying to repeat what the person is saying. So I've never been able to maintain that, but there are many people who do like shadowing, but, uh, again, not something that I've been able to.
38:12
The whole idea of even trying it out makes me feel uncomfortable.
38:18
okay. Here's some more questions. What is the ideal ratio of listening to reading input? Should one of them be preferred?
38:28
Depends on what you can get. I've never thought of that because it's always been kind of a struggle to find the comprehensible input. But that's another question I really don't know. My suspicion again, this is a suspicion is that there is an, a, a minimum of listening. And after that, it doesn't matter. The more you get of either the better you are. I think another consideration is obviously there's far more material available in writing.
38:54
There's material available only in audio, like a podcast I'm reluctant to listen to material where I can't get, unless I'm very good in the language. But if I'm at a 30% comprehension level in a podcast, I want the transcript. I want to have a chance to try to understand what I'm listening to understand. Uh, but other than that, and the other thing about listening, of course, it's easier to do so I can do it in my car. I can do it while making breakfast, reading. I'm committed.
39:21
I gotta sit there and read, I can't read and drive my car at the same time. So I think it's a function of what's available to you. Uh, what time you have to devote to one or the other task. Uh, I, and also what you like to do. So I'm, I think I'm always reluctant is that you should be 60% reading and 40% listening or something. I think depends on the individual.
39:42
Yeah, no answer to that. Here's another one of these questions that I don't think there's an answer to. When is the right time to come back to a previous language? I'd say, uh, seven o'clock in the evening.
39:59
You know, again, it's, it's so dependent on your circumstance. If you're about to go to Mexico and you haven't looked at Spanish for six years, that's the time to start refreshing your me, your Spanish, you know?
40:12
Uh, what do you think about the practice of reading aloud?
40:18
Uh, listening to someone else read aloud. Fantastic. I don't know that your reading aloud does any good at all it's output and you're not paying attention to meaning. I agree. And again, it's one of these things that I have tried and have never been able to continue doing. Right. I would, it feels boring before I even start. Right. Here's one though that comes up all the time. What do you consider fluent to be fluent in a language?
40:46
Wow. I, it depends so much on circumstance, on situations. Okay. In some situations I'm actually fluent and very impressive in languages I can hardly speak and depends on the person. Uh, that's so true. So it is incredibly variable. Again, I invite someone else to start working on it.
41:11
I, I, my own view. If you can use the language in a way that you are not uncomfortable and the person listening to you is not uncomfortable, then you're fluent. And I, if we wanted to be more specific, I tend to see it as B2 on the European scale. In other words, you have enough vocabulary that you're likely to understand much of what a native speaker says to you. And you're likely to be able to express yourself on a wide range of subjects. Even with mistakes. To me, that's fluent.
41:43
God, you just made me fluent in Spanish. Thank you. All right. Fantastic. And here's another one: can full phonological acquisition be achieved through input alone? Good question one. I'm prepared to answer. Okay. Same thing. Um, I think we're a lot better in pronunciation than we think we are.
42:03
Uh, in fact, I think the ability to perfectly acquire accents is there the language acquisition device never shuts off. We don't use our best accents cause we feel silly. I wanna relate to you the in incident that started it. It happened when I was teaching in Ethiopia a long time ago, and there was a, a British guy visiting our school, worked for the British council, I think. And we talked about his experiences in high school, French, uh, Secondary school.
42:32
He said the final exam you had to get up in front of your French teachers and speak to them. Nothing is more humiliating for a young man than they have to do that. So he decided to come in and make fun of the teachers and show them up for the fools they were. He dressed French. He had a beret. He had a glass of what looked like wine and he started to speak. He says, ah
43:01
... he thought he was making fun of them. He got the highest grades possible. He said, where have you been? That's great. Why haven't you ever done that in class? We can't do that because we're not a member of the group. It's not us. Peter Ustinov in an interview, said - his French is very good. I've heard him in movies. He sounds absolutely perfect, but he doesn't use that accent when he speaks to native speakers of French, he has an accent.
43:29
We have an output filter and it's because accent is a marker of group membership of club membership. Uh, when I made someone from, uh, London, I don't start speaking with a British accent.
43:44
I can a little bit. Okay. But it seems funny, awkward, and maybe even feels insulting.
43:50
So we have these powerful, effective blocks. We're a lot better than we think we are.
43:57
I agree with you. I have said in the past that in order to pronounce better, even to learn languages better, we have to have a sort of an attitude of cultural weightlessness,
44:10
you know, and, and, you know, I lived in Japan and or if a, if say a north American Anglo Saxon English speaker is very proud of being, you know, English speaker they're reluctant to be foolish. They're reluctant to just be culturally weightless and just try to hear the language and repeat the language and just go for it. So I totally agree with what you're saying. That's been my experience.
44:34
Yeah. I, but it is hard for the public to accept this.
44:39
I got a, um, invitation to meet with someone I was told was extremely wealthy business person from Germany, living in Los Angeles. And I was driven to his, uh, house up in the Hills, expensive. He wanted to get rid of his accent.
44:55
And I gave him my little theory there. Uh, and he said, no, that's ridiculous. I said, what if I got you a sound spectrograph and we got native speakers of English and you try to max match their pattern. Yes. That's how to do it. I said, it's never gonna work. He showed me the door immediately and told me to leave.
45:14
People would never believed this it's there within us. We can do it. Don't worry about it. There's good reason we have an accent. See, A I personally, if I hear someone who has, uh, a noticeable foreign accent, but uses the language. Well, I, I respect those people. In fact, more than someone who has almost no accent. So there there's no advantage in if you're being, if people understand you, there's no real advantage in being like mistaken for a native, which I don't
45:43
think is achievable for most people. Uh, also I think getting back to what you were saying, we have to wanna be part of that group. So every time I've, you know, tried to learn the language, Japanese French Chinese whatever. I wanna be one of them. I don't see myself as this foreigner trying to learn this language. If I'm in a group with them, I'm one of them. That's that kind of attitude I think helps us. And so I do believe that that, and oh, and the other thing I was gonna say.
46:12
Okay. An actor, an actress, they have to play another role. Right? So they are very good at accents because they're used to the idea of seeing themselves as not John Smith, but as this character that they're playing. And, and on one last note, there was this American actress whose name escapes me, but she has a phenomen. Her pronunciation in French is flawless, but she still makes tremendous mistakes with gender. Yeah.
46:39
But like, it's amazing. She speaks like a French woman, but the gender is just so difficult to get the hang of cuz we don't have it in English, but she, as an actress, she's able to project herself into the role of being a French woman. It's called method acting.
46:55
Method acting is where you get the emotion within our, within yourself. And then you can. But it's not real. It's still acting. You can do that. You can do the accent in a film, et cetera, real life, something else. However, to some extent, speaking of foreign language is a game. To some extent we are imitating the culture, the language of another group, we are pretending to be them. We are acting to some extent or, or you don't agree? I think that's fascinating. Absolutely. Maybe that's
47:26
on that not. We can, we can end it. I think we could probably go on for hours here, uh, talking about language. Uh, I wanna end by, first of all, I have my, uh, Ukrainian ... on today because it's the Ukrainian national day or day of independence. And, uh, I think, uh, we all support Ukraine and, uh, their heroic struggle against this evil invasion, but, um, also I wanna tell you that you have been a big influence. Uh, because of your wisdom and your ability, like when I
47:57
saw that book in Taipei, which was like this thin, all right. And I, I showed the other day in my video, I got stacks of books that are full of complicated language and everything that they said, and these books was reduced into this book. And the more we can deal with this instead of this, the better we can understand, you know, the process of language earning. So I thank you. Well, thank you. And thank you for all the help you've given me. And you're still my therapist. Appreciate, thank you.
48:27
Thank you. No more Prozac. Okay. Bye Steven.
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