Ex-Professor Reveals Way to REALLY Learn Languages (according to science)

most students still make the same mistakes even though they know the rule obviously there are commercial programs now unfortunately most of the commercial programs are not very good you should be focusing on acquisition Dr Jeff mcquillin is an expert in second language acquisition which is the process by which we learn languages now he's got a PhD in Applied Linguistics and was a university Professor for many years Dr mcquillin has also got Decades of experience in understanding how it is that we learn languages which is going to be so useful for anyone wanting to learn a

new language at the minute Dr mcquillin has published numerous articles related to language learning and now runs the ESL podcast for English language Learners he also has a Blog at the backseat linguist tocom in this interview Jeff reveals how it is that we learn languages according to the research and the big mistakes that people make when it comes to learning grammar and vocabulary and also his advice for language Learners enjoy Jeff how is it that um adults learn learn new languages well adults learn new languages the same way that children children learn new languages the

same way that we all learn the language that we speak today which is by understanding messages that seems a little cryptic so let me sort of break that down a little there are actually two ways that your brain stores language if you will the first way is what we call learning and learning is a conscious knowledge of language it's the knowledge of rules i before e except after C in linguistics we usually try to distinguish or at least some of us try to distinguish between what's learning and what's called acquisition learning is conscious acquisition is

subconscious or unconscious it's the knowledge that you have in your brain even if you don't know it's there it's the knowledge that we tend to use most of the time during communication now the question is which of these is more important which of these should we be focused on should we be focused on learning or should we be focused on acquisition and the answer I think as I've already tipped is you should be focusing on acquisition unconscious or subconscious knowledge of the language your feel for the language the language that you know without even having

to think about it how do we get there well to get learning everyone knows how to get learning you pick up a book and you open it and you study the rules or you make yourself your flashcards or whatever it happens to be acquisition comes from understanding messages the brain acquires language when it can understand what is being communicated to it let's take an example let's say that uh you're learning Spanish you're going to have to find a situation where the language is presented to you in such a way that it's comprehensible that it's understandable

for example uh if I started speaking in Spanish Spanish [Music] estoo Doos see Doos there are no rules there there's no memorization there all you had to do was watch me and understand the language and if you understood it you started to acquire a little bit of Spanish in that 20 seconds that I was speaking what happens is you take what you know and you leverage that to what you don't the language that you already understand or the visual language that you all understand because you understand the meaning of me holding up my hands and

talking about my hands you take that knowledge and you apply it to what you don't know and that's how the brain understands things so an adult independent learner where do they start if they wanted to go all right well I've heard of this this acquisition idea that sounds fantastic where do they start because obviously there isn't necessarily going to be a always a teacher there who's willing to go through the acquisition process and say l man or or or whatever it is um where where would you think someone should start on that sort of method

what I tell people is well first of all most people are trying to learn languages that are popular they're trying to learn French or Spanish or Chinese and so the the reality is now fortunately there are at least there are resources out there there are YouTube videos um people like yourself who talk about how to acquire languages obviously there are commercial programs now unfortunately most of the commercial programs are not very good they tend to they tend to focus on short little pieces of language that you try to memorize rather than providing you with the

kind of Rich comprehensible uh language that I I demonstrated with my little mono lesson you should be looking for a teacher or or a method or materials that number one you can understand that give you tools to understand the language other than just translating it okay there's nothing wrong with translation there's nothing wrong with using the first language to try to acquire a second language but if most of the time you're just looking at translations of words that's not a very effective way you want something that is mostly presented in the language that you're trying

to acquire you would want to start with materials that present visually information to you that will help you understand what the person is saying or yeah what you're reading so that would be pictures that would be visuals that would be someone who is speaking slowly and clearly that seems sort of trivial right but it's actually a really important thing I tell people look for a teacher that understands the importance of visuals that speaks slowly that speaks clearly that presents uh interesting stories a Woman by the name of Beno Mason in Japan who has developed this

story listening approach she and and and teachers who follow her method they stand in front of a Blackboard or they have visuals uh and they explain the story a simple story in the context of what we we've just said about this kind of um implicit learning and this this acquisition how does grammar fit into into all of that by grammar people often mean syntax right the the order of words the way that that sentences are constructed when people talk about grammar usually they mean conscious study of language and we go back to the distinction I

made earlier which is the difference between learning conscious knowledge and acquisition unconscious knowledge yes you can study syntax and yes you will learn the certain rules of syntax the problem here is can you actually use it when you need it the rule books of grammar only capture a small portion of what in fact our entire very complicated syntactical system but even more importantly let's say You're really bright and you memorize all those rules that's still not good enough because you also have to have time to use the rule and if you're in a conversation or

even if you're reading a book to stop and say now wait a minute um is that present progressive past progress do I use the imperfect here or the predate as as human beings our natural tendency is to focus on meaning we're not so interested in how that that message is construed the the brain doesn't linguistically multitask it's either focusing on meaning or it's focusing on form it can switch back quickly but it can't do both and if you try to focus on what what linguists call focus on form how something is saying uh is being

communicated you're not focusing on meaning and the Brain just naturally wants to focus on meaning for the most part when people talk about studying grammar they're talking about trying to memorize rules and distinctions and here are the here are the imperfect here are the irregular verbs and the predate of certain verbs in Spanish that's all waste of time you need to focus just I mean all of that will come to you that by the way brings up an important point that some people may object say well I I can I can learn things and then

later it seems that I I've acquired it so the learning seems to become acquisition that's not what we think happens in other words just because you've studied something consciously and you really know those rules does it mean it's going to enter into your acquired system is is that is there any benefit from um from actually studying the rules explicitly in terms of being able to say monitor um my own speech when I'm speaking Spanish for example is is there is there much benefit in that or should should students just focus on acquisition and wait until

that they naturally acquire the rule without having to explicitly think about it uh the latter definitely uh I don't think there's much much uh benefit in attempting to monitor just because most people uh are not very good monitors uh they they aren't able to take bring up that explicit knowledge they don't have the time take the example of writing okay you would think that writing would be the ideal place that you could quote unquote use the term monitor right the notion that you can take a rule and you can apply it right at the right

place and you can fix just before you're about to say something or before you're about to write something you can say wait a minute is that pass oh that's pres boom got ity I've used my conscious knowledge right in writing when we've studied writing and explicit instruction so you teach someone the grammar rules blah blah and then you give them something to write and then you say Okay blah blah blah uh go ahead and write that most students still make the same mistakes even though they know the rule even when you have time and you

know the rule the hardest one to meet is actually focusing on form that's why proof reading is such a difficult thing for most people because because we you you write something you think it's perfect you give it to somebody else and say oops 17 errors in here spelling errors or whatever it is right that's this before before spell check but you know what I'm talking about proofing is so difficult because we focus on meaning so don't don't spend your time trying to become a good monitor spend your time trying to be a good acquirer and

get lots of comprehensible input if my brain is first focusing on meaning so someone's talking to me in let's say Spanish I am listening to what they're saying and my brain is Al automatically implicitly without me thinking about it focusing on meaning first of all if I'm then wanting to think about trying to acquire those those grammar rules or I or acquire grammar whether we say rules or or whatever um yeah and I'm I'm using content if I if I take it in a slightly different context if I'm using content what level um should I

ideally want to understand so that I'm not just focusing on the meaning but actually I've also got enough capacity to acquire the form so that I can get that well do I have to have a higher level of comprehension of the meaning of things or will that just happen implicitly there's just no way for you to know what the current state of your level of acquisition is there is a way of knowing how much you can understand now everybody has a different level of comfort but for me if I understand 95% of what I'm I'm

reading or listening to then I'm confident that my acquisition system my brain is going to be able to pick up whatever grammar rules I have in acquir job I don't know what those grammar rules are I certainly wouldn't try to focus on certain grammar rules so don't worry about in other words where you are in that order whether you've acquired this rule or that rule simply get lots of good comprehensible messages that you can mostly understand now if you if you're reading or listening to something that you understand 100% of you well you still may

be acquiring even though you understand 100% of the of the vocabulary there still may be grammatical aspects that you're acquiring or strengthening in your acquisition system so I wouldn't say don't do that but generally speaking uh as you're going through you want to find you want to listen and read things that you at least contain some information about the language that you don't know but I wouldn't worry too much about that you definitely need to keep pushing yourself but for most people that's sort of a natural process as their language fluency improves they start reading

things that are more closer to native language and and their language develops um you as a consequence of that interesting all right well that that's um that's sort of reassuring and that as Learners we don't have to worry about it you could just just focus on the brain will sort it out for you well that's good new on to um one of potentially one of your favorite topics I don't know uh if it is or not vocabulary um yes as Learners we need a lot of words if we're going to you know reach any real

level in in a language what's sort of the most effective way for us to to improve our vocabulary the interest of people in vocabulary is is a good one it's it's an understandable one vocabulary you will not be surprised to learn is acquired the exact same way that everything else is acquired in a language which is through comprehensible messages through understanding the language that you read and listen to the most efficient way to do this as I've already indicated I think in the uh previous question is to make sure that you're understanding messages that are

in that high level of a comprehension you already understand 90 95% of the words or even 98% of the words and you're able to use that to figure out the the few words that you don't understand now sometimes when I say well 98% you think well that's that's really high but what we do know is that as that percentage starts dropping as you understand only 80% or 70% you're going to struggle incredibly with the language so much so that you're not going to have enough knowledge you know to understand the things you don't know so

we push I always push people to to Really find things that they're comfortable with that they can read or listen to comfortably enough so that you can the brain has the opportunity to pick out those little those words that they don't know let let me just say one more thing about the vocabulary acquisition well I might say a lot more than vocabulary is acquired incidentally and incrementally the two eyes okay we acquire vocabulary incidentally by that I mean we acquire vocabulary when we're not worried about vo acquiring vocabulary we acquire vocabulary as we're reading and

understanding messages nobody picks up a book and says I'm going to acquire some more French vocabulary today yay no you pick up a book and say I want to read this story or I want to understand this topic that's why you read you're focused on meaning vocabulary acquis position is a incidental that is to say it's an extra benefit you pick those words up unconsciously as you're going along the second big point about vocabulary acquisition and this is one that people really have to understand the one that people I think get the most in trouble

with is vocabulary is acquired incrementally that means you pick up a little bit of the meaning typically each time you see it there were series of studies done in the 70s ' 80s in ' 90s and that contined to be done but the most important ones were done by a guy by the name of Bill Nagi who was at the University of Illinois at the time in the 1980s and what Nagi discovered is that every time you see a word that you've never seen before usually you pick up a sense of what that word is

maybe it's just whether it's a noun or a verb maybe it's a good thing or a bad thing based on the other context in the story or what you're reading or what you're listening to but each time you see that new word in a different context you're going to pick up 10 15% more 10 15% more that all adds up so that every time you see those words you're picking up that incremental knowledge until such a point where all of a sudden you know the the word unconsciously and you don't know how you learned it

I should say acquired it the good thing is the words that you really need to know by definition you'll see them more often don't worry about that one rare word it's not that important the important thing is you've picked up a little bit of knowledge even without realizing it and it's that incremental knowledge that you're picking up as you're reading and listening that drives your language acquisition in terms of vocabul vocabulary acquisition that's where we get our knowledge and it's it's it's hard because you have to trust your brain you have to trust your brain

that it's going to pick out the meanings and it's gonna it's gonna put it in your unconscious system so relax it's happening as long as you're getting comprehensible messages so for those those words then I have to see them in context um from from what you're saying and then that way I'll get a percentage whatever that percentage is it doesn't doesn't really matter I'm getting a little bit of that that word each time what about things like um you know if I think of it pretty much any beginner's textbook there'll be the the first opening

dialogues and there'll be a list of um vocabulary down the side and the translation for those words if I try and consciously remember that vocabulary and then the the the translation that is at least the most accurate translation that we we can we can get at time how useful is that sort of thing because that's the sort of thing that people will then immediately go and say pop on a flash card without any any context around it and then quite quickly then you'll just remembering individual words how useful is that it's useful as you're reading

the dialogue through perhaps because now you can kind of understand it but it's it's generally speaking not very useful after that if memorizing vocabulary worked you would be able to take a word put it on your flash card memorize it and then the next time you see it boom you'll be able to use it let's say you teach kids 10 words and you have them memorize those words and then you give them something to read a reading passage or something in a book that contains those 10 words the theory is because they memorize those words

they'll be able to understand that reading better the reality is they don't we know from studies with with children with adults in first language and second language studies done from beginning in the mid 1970s up to the present day that teaching vocabulary explicitly or trying to memorize words explicitly leads to a kind of knowledge as one person put it to me it's it's the kind of knowledge that you can't use it's it's knowledge that doesn't actually improve your comprehension our learned knowledge is very fragile unconscious knowledge acquisition is there it tends to be much more

permanent so trying to memorize words produces a very shallow what I call a shallow effect now researchers understand that and that's why in the 1980s vocabulary instruction shifted from this sort of memorized words to what's called Rich or deep instruction but the problem with that is is that also takes a lot of time and so so it's not a very efficient use of your time the other thing is that that that if you look on the internet and you watch other videos and God knows why you would want to I mean you've got Matt here

listen to what he's saying but let's say you go out and you see somebody say well let's let's um you should guys should be really be trying to memorize lists of vocabulary and they give you a program uh anky or dual lingual whatever it is and they say look it's much faster you're going to memorize all these words that is not in fact what the research shows what the research shows is that in order to memorize a large group of words you've got to spend so much time reviewing those words that if you had just

read and listened with the time that you've spent memorizing those words you would have acquired more vocabulary the time efficiency argument is so against memorization and flashcards it's ridiculous other people who who Advocate flashcards they're not looking at the research correctly they're only looking at a study and says Hey look this group memorized 12 words in X number of of minutes wow but what they don't realize is that that the next week they would have forgotten all 12 of those words or if they had spent time memorizing it over a period of say months that

time is actually if you took that time and you instead had just been listening and reading the comprehensible input you would have acquired even more words if you spend your time on on flash cards all you're going to get is vocabulary whereas if you spend your time reading and listening you're going to get vocabulary you're going to get syntax you're going to get morphology you're going to get knowledge you're going to get all the other aspects of language whereas flashcards give you one aspect of language yeah fantastic and and that's one of those things it's

not just the opportunity cost in terms of time spent but it's also just it's objectively more enjoyable to sit down and follow a story than than it is to and that flash cards only work in theory if you do them regularly over a long period of time which is correct having a reading habit which you could you could yeah you know get through many more books and have a fantastic time whilst whilst you're doing it obviously providing you can find things at the right level and and that's the thing I think certainly for me it's

just finding a way to get an enjoyable habit and that's how you're going to pick up the language rather than uh it it shouldn't be something you have to force yourself to do because the sheer number of hours it takes to acquire a language you're never going to get there if you if you're not enjoying what you're doing it's just not going to work is it for Learners if you could give them one piece of advice in terms of how to improve their language learning or or learn in in a way that like we say

will keep it sustainable and hopefully enjoyable but also effective what would you advise people the one thing that I think is most important especially for a beginning language requires like really all of us is lower your expectations and and the reason I say that is that's that's such an important advice for anyone trying to learn something new especially as an adult because adults are very hard on themselves they think that they should be going faster than in fact they can for example a lot of people say well I wish I started learning Spanish when I

was 5 years old or three years old kids pick up language so quickly nonsense that's a complete myth children do not acquire language quickly what happens instead is that our perception for children is different different than our perception or expectations for ourselves as adults so we think that kids are picking up language quickly but in fact when you go back and you study kids acquisition it's quite slow and labored language acquisition takes time if you put expectations on yourself that are unreasonable you're going to get discouraged and you will stop so I think the average

person who wants to improve their language or learn language the first thing that need to be is realistic lower your expect it takes time but the good news is we know how to do it if you enjoy it enough you will continue doing it and the way you do that is by finding comprehensible input