How to use YouTube to boost your language skills

Hi, today I want to talk about YouTube, which I consider to be the new university in many senses and the ideal place to learn languages. And this is in response to some pushback I got from my last video, where I said we shouldn't focus on the language classroom as a place to learn and people said, well, yeah, but, uh, in the case of Canada, we have this core French, which has to be taught, we're obliged to teach it, the teachers are, but What, what are you going to do? How are you going to teach core French?

Or in the case of Japan, a lot of students are not very motivated to learn English. All of which I recognize, but the net result is of the current teaching practices is that a very small percentage of students end up speaking the language. So whatever is being done is actually not being very effective.

I can speak. With more confidence about what happens in Canada than in the situation in Japan. So in my view, if I were responsible for the core French program in English speaking Canadian schools, I would begin by telling the students in my program this year and for the next three years.

The coming years, you are not going to be required to remember anything. You are not going to be required to learn anything. You are simply going to expose yourself to the language.

You're going to listen. You're going to watch movies. You're going to read.

We're going to maybe talk in the classroom. I'm here to answer questions. I'm here to help you find things of interest for you to listen to and read and watch, but you're not going to be required to remember anything.

So if you see a word that helps you get through the meaning of a sentence, Then I'm sort of reminded of Zhuangzi's parable of the fishnet, which I can't remember the words exactly, but I'll put it up on the screen here. But the gist of it is once the fisherman has caught a fish, he doesn't need his fishnet anymore. So you use a word to get through the meaning of whatever you're reading, and then you forget about it.

You haven't forgotten it, but you can't recall it. It's in your brain somewhere. And just keep on catching fish, getting rid of the net, learning words, forgetting about them.

Worrying about whether you can test on them, not worrying about if you can use them again. It doesn't matter. You have to get used to that sense of listening to things you don't understand, learning words and forgetting them, but somehow trying to find a way to enjoy it.

So that would be sort of my introduction. YouTube, I make specific reference to YouTube because I think YouTube, as I say, is the new university, the origin or the etymology of the word university comes from meaning the whole, universitas, which refers Referred to a whole community of professors and scholars or teachers and learners, which is what YouTube is. YouTube is a community of people teaching each other, learning from each other.

Anyone can teach, anyone can learn. When I need to figure out how to do something, like I was going to wash my windows here at home, and I thought, you know, maybe I've been doing it wrong all these years. I'll look up on YouTube and sure enough, there's any number of videos providing sort of technique on how to better wash windows.

And that's what I did. I washed my windows with a technique that I had learned on YouTube. And I was assembling a bicycle the other day and I looked it up on YouTube.

And fortunately I did because the left pedal, the thread, as I'm assembling the pedal has a left handed thread, which makes sense when you think about it afterwards, but unless you're thinking about it, you might try very hard to get it to turn. You know, the right handed thread. Uh, anyway, small details, but YouTube, great source of information.

First thing that people can do if the kids are willing to accept the fact that they just have to listen, just expose themselves, watch cartoons, watch movies, don't worry what they can remember. And I would even suggest to students, step number one, go to YouTube and look up. People like Luca Lappagiello or Lucca, other people who talk about how to learn languages.

There's so many of them. Expose yourself to it, forget it. Watch someone else, forget it.

Get a sense of what language learning is all about. Because, you know, someone who's in the core language curriculum, French curriculum in Canada, or learning English in Japan. They're going to be added for quite a few years.

So they probably would benefit from having some sense of how language learning works and that's best found on the internet. And I'm referring specifically to YouTube. Now, the next thing is kids in Sweden who watch cartoons, they're interested in their cartoons.

They're not interested in learning English. They're interested in cartoons. So the trick is.

How to find things of interest. I find it demotivating when the teacher says, read this or watch this or listen to this, because I, the teacher find it interesting. That's not interesting to me, the learner.

So the teacher in my program of core French has to help me. The learners and encourage the learners to go and find things of interest to them. Sports, cartoons, music, songs.

It doesn't matter. In fact, when we say things of interest to them, I would even go as far as to say in other languages, explore YouTube. Now we can talk about YouTube in the classroom and how to make sure that the, uh, students are on safe sites, call it.

And so that's a whole other technical issue, which I won't get into, but there are ways of dealing with that. But the point is. And as I've explained many times, anything that's on YouTube with subtitles or even without subtitles can be imported into a website like LingQ.

And I have done this. I'm going to show you this in French and someone who's working on their French can go in there Find these videos on a variety of subjects and bring them in and learn from them. Another use of YouTube is points of grammar.

Now, I'm not big on teaching grammar upfront, but what tends to happen after a while is if you've heard certain patterns in the language, you become curious. You think you can Maybe focus in on it a little bit and improve. And there is no shortage, if we're talking about French, of language instruction in French on the internet, but the same is true for other languages.

And again, I would encourage the students to go on the internet, go on YouTube rather. Specifically, and go find videos of interest to you about how the language works, about the articles or the possessive or the gender, anything you want, just go there. It's all there.

Look it up. Have any questions come to me. And if you can't find those kinds of YouTube videos, then our channels, I will help you find them.

Now, if, uh, from the perspective of a teacher. There are all kinds of videos on how to use YouTube in the language classroom. Because after all, this is this university, YouTube university, it's a whole community of teachers and learners.

And the teachers can also look up how other teachers are using YouTube in the classroom. It was pointed out, for example, that if you recommend a video to the student, you can actually help the student. Start in at seven minutes and 15 seconds, if there's a way of doing that so that they only see that segment of that video.

But I would steer clear of the idea that this teacher tells the student what to listen to. It's gotta be the student exploring YouTube and finding content in the target language so that they explore, they get in the habit of looking for things of interest to them. And if they find things.

they're more likely to find things of interest to them. I believe that if the teacher says, this is important, you should know about, you know, environmentalism or whatever it is the teacher's interested in or classical literature or any number of these things, that the teacher thinks, perhaps with good reason, but these things are important for the student to learn, but that's not what it's about. It's about the language.

And therefore the student should be encouraged to find things of interest to them and just let it wash over them. Um, listening, because all of this is contributing to a sense of the language. Another thing we can do with YouTube is have the class make videos, either individual videos of them speaking and say French or English, which can be part of their kind of portfolio of who they are in this other language, or the class can make videos together.

And it's all part of participating in this community of learners and learners. Teachers, and of course, if they make videos, they can share these with friends, uh, in the case of Canada, uh, perhaps, uh, students in Vancouver or in British Columbia or in Alberta. Ontario can make videos in French, which they share with students in Quebec who could then make, maybe make videos in English, which they then send back to them.

One of the things I discovered in, in looking up this subject of, uh, using YouTube in the classroom is a very interesting video by this, uh, YouTuber called Geneviève Avelet. Who talks about her passion for teaching Quebecois French. And I found a number of videos on the subject of Quebecois French.

Now, if we are talking about the core French curriculum in Canada, we are talking in a Canadian context about Quebecois or French Canadian, but typically Quebecois French. Unfortunately in Canada, there has been a tradition of Thinking that somehow Quebecois French is a sort of lesser version of French compared to the Parisian, call it French. And so this creates in the minds of the learners, a sense that they're learning something that is less valuable than the sort of call it the international version of French.

It's not unexpected that the language spoken by 6 million people, uh, will be considered less somehow valuable than the version of the language spoken by spoken by more than 60 million people. And even more if we look at, uh, second language learners of French. However, if the objective is to create or to help learners develop a positive attitude about what they're learning in the context of Canada.

Then they should be encouraged to look at some of these videos to understand how French spoken in Quebec is different, why it is that way, and hear that from people who are proud of that version of French and who want to encourage others to like that version of French, because a majority of people who learn core French in Canada may have to interact with. People in Quebec. And so therefore it's in their interest to learn Quebecois French, or at least to understand how Quebecois French is different from, but not in any way inferior to the French spoken in France.

Now, the learner in Vancouver may still prefer the French spoken in France, may prefer to learn Spanish. And I think it's very important not to impose. Any value on the learner, not that the French from France is better, nor that the French from Quebec is better, uh, nor that as a Canadian where French is an official language, they are obliged to learn French rather as much as possible to facilitate exploration and particularly using YouTube as such a wonderful community of teachers and learners.

Where you can learn how to fix your toaster. You can learn how to wash your windows. You can learn languages.

You can learn how to learn languages. You can learn how to help others learn language. There is no limit to what you can learn.

And you can look these things up in the target language, in the language that you are learning. And when you find a video that you like, make sure you turn on the subtitles in that same target language, and you can then import it into a link and it becomes a lesson. And so I'll show you here.

For example, I imported a few of these things. And if I were so motivated, I could go in there and acquire new words and maybe some Quebecois expressions. With these videos that I've found on my own, the key being that I am the one who is exploring with the guidance, with the encouragement, with explanation, with feedback, with help from the teacher.

So, and I think the same can be done in Japan with regard to English. Again, as I said, and if the learner is more interested in Chinese, then they should be helped to find content in Chinese or Korean or whatever language they are more interested in learning. Use this community of teachers and learners, professors and students, as an opportunity to encourage and enable people to step outside their own little world, explore on their own, develop a taste for learning and, and, and, and, You know, people may say, Steve, you're very unrealistic.

Most kids aren't interested in anything. You know, this whole negative thing, which I haven't found to be the case, but majority of language students and language tests are not so motivated. However, my approach, no test, no pressure.

You're not required to learn anything or remember anything. You're just going to be exposed to the language. At some point, some of these people may become motivated when they can learn in a more deliberate way.

But in any case. What we are now doing, at least in Canada, where 6 percent of anglophones outside Quebec can speak French. That number of people probably went to French immersion, have a parent or a relative who speaks French, has had some other exposure to French, in other words, the actual teaching system in the schools is not serving them very well.

So it might be worthwhile looking at this other option. Thank you for listening. Bye.