834. The best way to learn a language according to research (Article)

hello listeners it's new episode Time welcome back to my podcast Luke's English podcast I'm Luke this is my podcast welcome here's a new episode and this one is all about language learning uh it's a it's sort of I thought that it would be time to do another language learning focused episode apparently it's a sort of an ongoing mystery the whole subject of language learning and exactly how to do it the best way to do it different people have got different approaches um and uh it's always an interesting subject to talk about um I think this

episode is going to be called the best way to learn a language according to research okay so you get an idea of what's going to be included the best way to learn a language I mean I'll prob I'll say right at the beginning I think the best way to learn a language is uh the the way that works for you as an individual and it's a question of trying different things stepping out of your comfort zone until you've experienced a variety of different of different ways to learn a language or improve the language that you're

trying to get to grips with you know try all the different ways and sort of analyze the effects of trying those ways and the way that they make you feel and then when you've found something that kind of works for you uh you stick with it and you keep doing it and when I say the thing that works for you what I really mean is the thing that uh you enjoy doing because I've said lots of times in the past that learning a language is really about time and practice it's a question of putting in

as you know as much time as practice as possible over uh you know a long period of time now maybe the right kind of practice you know you've got to sort of work out what type of practice works best for you but then ultimately when you've got that it's just a question of spending time working with the language and uh finding a way that's enjoyable that you actually are happy to do will make a huge difference because then you're probably much more likely to actually do it um so that's my that's an initial thought I've

got right at the beginning just based on the title of the episode but anyway to explain more uh what I'm going to do in this episode is read through an article this is an article I found on the website medium.com this is a site that I sort of browse sometimes just looking for interesting things to read and also medium sends me emails as well it kind of sends me suggestions of Articles it thinks I might like it sends me by email and you can get these things too it's medium is a good website for just

sort of reading articles that are not too long things that are quite interesting lots of articles with tips and advice about different aspects of Life about motivation about mental health about physical health language learning and and self-development of various kinds it's quite good for dropping little interesting articles into your inbox so if you're looking for things to read you could go to medium.com sign up free and you know sort of select the sorts of articles that you're interested in and it will send them to you I understand as well that medium.com is a is a

is a website that um you can kind of send articles too so it's a sort of a fairly open website that lots of um writers can post their articles onto um so I was I was looking at medium.com and I was searching for articles about language learning and then I I found this one and it's all about the best way to learn a language but uh specifically it's about looking at all the research that's been done into this subject and collecting it all together into one article now this episode I would say probably follows on

from the episode I did with Steve Kaufman a while ago um that's where we looked specifically at Steve and his approach to learning a language and as you know Steve talked about how he likes to use the sort of um the um he likes to use the comprehensible input model outlined by Stephen crashen which involves reading like a lot of material a material that you find compelling that you're interested in in reading and you start by that you start by consuming as much language as possible probably in the form of texts of varying difficulty levels

and then once you've once you've kind of done that and you've got a sense an overall sense of what the language is like then you start to actually use it and there's not much kind of focused study where he studies the language from the bottom up looking at the grammar of it and all that sort of thing um I think this episode will probably relate also to the episode I did about what it really means to be good at English and in that one I kind of explored ideas of what um fluency really means and

the the different aspects of English ability that there are and different ways of assessing someone's English and also the conversation I had with Hada Shemesh and her experiences of improving her English and also you know the many other episodes I've done in the past about um similar things um so going back to Steve Kaufman he learns languages successfully and he seems to do it by doing tremendous amounts of listening and reading now one thing that we always think when you know the one thing that people always think when they um hear about the the case

of Steve Kaufman is they people think is it is he exceptional or or do you think that anyone could do what he does could his method work for everyone or does it just work for him in some way you know this is the thing this is I guess this is the thing that keeps people talking about language learning it keeps people sort of disagreeing about it and discussing things about it is that probably there are different methods that work for different people but maybe there are certain Universal things that we have to put in place

so that we know we are learning a language in the right way or perhaps in the most efficient way it's just a good idea to take a step back and look at the whole process of learning a language and try to make sure that we're doing it in the in the optimal way okay so let's see what some research academic research has said about learning a language and let's see what conclusions we can draw from this and generally what this tells us about language learning and you know maybe this can help you position yourself help

give you some perspective into your own language learning process and hopefully you'll just find it interesting to listen to as well so the best way to learn a language according to research now you research this is a noun the noun can be pronounced research or research there's two ways to pronounce the noun the verb is always pronounced research to research something so the best way to learn a language according to research or according to research this is from medium.com written by Gavin Lam who has a master's degree and a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the

University of Hawaii so he should know what he's talking about and this is a consolidation of research conclusions about the best way to learn another language consolidation that means basically taking these uh separate things and bringing them together okay and sort of breaking them down to the the the their summaries kind of um bringing all these disparate things together into one article in this case so what can all this research tell us about how to learn English so I'm going to read the article and also give my comments about learning English I hope you find

it instructive you'll find the link to the article on the page for this episode on my website that's basically you know that that's what you'll find and that's what I'm reading from so if you want to kind of read along with me then feel free okay so uh Gavin Lam's um article is actually called the trifecta of effective language learning so he's referring to actually three key points for Effective language learning so the trifecta of effective language learning learning another language isn't just about the acquisition of a new skill so apparently there's there's more to

it than that so Gavin starts with some questions first some questions what are the differences between first and second language learning why do some people seem to have a knack for learning languages While others struggle or even resign themselves from the task entirely how does age matter in learning another language how do our own unique individual differences like learning styles affect our ability to learn a new language what role does conscious attention play in language learning can we just soak up the language like a sponge if we immerse ourselves in the language or do we

have to pay attention to the details in order to learn how does your first language influence how you learn a second language and what are the most effective language learning strategies in becoming a successful language learner now I would like to discuss those questions these are really good discussion questions um so I think that I'll discuss them and just sort of give some of my thoughts and conclusions as I close the window here in my room so the differences between first and second language learning so we learn our first languages as children okay and um

you know so you know we're all familiar with that process that you know we come out of the the we're born and uh first we start making one syllable noises you know those sorts of things and eventually these start to form uh multi-syllable words and then multi-word phrases and then sentences and then before you know it we're just babbling away talking and talking you know as parents we encourage our children to start talking and then when the children do get the knack for it they we can't stop them you know and they'll just go on

and on and on uh which is a wonderful thing to observe so learning a first language I mean it's it's to talk about it very basically um yeah it's a lot of it's about trial and error right as children we try to express ourselves and we get it wrong a lot like um there's a lot of Errors like kids make tons of mistakes like for example my daughter she will uh these days she's five and her languages is a lot more um complex than it was before but um she makes mistakes like for example with

um irregular verbs so she obviously uh while learning how to conjugate verbs in English she learns the the Ed ending rule because most verbs end with Ed as you well know start started waited and so on play played and um and so what happens is she's developed that rule and then she just applies that to all verbs so she says goad I goed to the shops instead of saying I went to the shops so she makes all these mistakes those mistakes get corrected uh by her parents by me and my wife but also she just

as she hears the language more and more and starts reading it she starts to notice what you know the correct forms are and so she self-corrects you know it's but it's a long process um it takes years really before she can get to a sort of fluent and accurate level um right so I mean I could talk more in much more detail about about learning a first language but you know you're familiar with the process when it comes to learning a second language I guess the difference is that often this is done in adulthood most

of us learn second languages in adulthood or at least in sort of late childhood we might start studying a language at school and it's interesting that often learning the second language it's done in a more formalized way I mean you know the environment in which we learn uh language two uh might be done in a school environment so we are taught we are actively taught this the second language often that's our first experience is that we have a teacher we have a course book we have lessons and we we we go through a rigid structured

um program of lessons so we are taught the language it's done in an academic framework and also often it's an it's an active Endeavor it's something that we actually have to actively try to achieve so today I'm going to learn English so we we do some English learning and then it stops compared to L1 learning language one where learning the language is not the thing that we are trying to do but we are just learning just to communicate and just to achieve things and language learning sort of happens as a necessary consequence or as a

necessary we have a need to master the language in order to essentially operate as human beings and get the things we want whereas second language learning seems to be more of a considered um thing that we know we we actually try to learn the language I could talk more about it but there are some differences uh next question why do some people seem to have a knack for learning languages if you have a knack for something it just means you have a sort of what seems to be like a an inbuilt uh skill or a

talent for it like you might say that Steve Kaufman has a knack for learning languages that he just like reads apparently just reads loads of books and then suddenly ping he's got it or you see these other polyglots on the internet who are just excellent at it or you every now and then you you know you meet someone who has learned English as a second language as an adult and they've just got this accent they've got like a really natural sounding accent they in fact they could even be from England or the United States or

Australia or something but know they're from some other country where the the language is not actually spoken so you know why why is it that some people just seem to be good at it while other people struggle other people even resign themselves from the task entirely they just completely give up and uh so why is that I mean I'm not sure maybe some people do have sort of innate talents for language learning maybe that relates to growing up in a multilingual environment or maybe even relates to uh genetics maybe some people um maybe if ancestors

have been maybe if like over years and years and years your ancestors were exposed to multilingual environments maybe they just developed a sort of almost maybe they develop the ability and somehow passed it down I don't really know but so maybe some people have got an innate skill whereas um maybe just some people have the right level of motivation like someone like Steve Kaufman okay we could say that you know when you look at his history his personal history you learned that he was actually born in Sweden his parents were from I think the Czech

Republic and then he moved to the United States uh no then he moved to Canada when he was five years old I think to Montreal which we know is a bilingual City so actually when he examined his life story you start to see that in the very beginning there is there there seems to be some level of multilingualism around him um so um what was I what what's the point I'm trying to make so oh but yeah okay so you can say that but also maybe it's just Steve's General approach to learning languages that allows

him to do it the the positive approach that he has he he has a really sort of No Stress approach to it he doesn't rush into the task he doesn't expect great results too soon it's very leisurely and it's all an enjoyable adventure for him whereas other people are desperate to learn a language as a sort of commodity they think I need language I need English in order to get money or to get a job to get money or whatever it is to get status or work or something like that and so the language is

just like this thing that they have to do and they want to be able to cram study that language and sort of find the most efficient and effective way to learn it so they then they don't have to learn it anymore so they can just move on to the next thing and maybe that's the wrong approach maybe you need a more relaxed approach a more um you know lower your expectations find ways to just enjoy it and just to you know enjoy the ride rather than trying desperately to get to the destination all the time

so maybe Steve is successful simply because of his method and his attitude rather than some genetic predisposition or maybe some early um uh childhood imprint that left him with the ability to do it I but you know I'm not sure really I'm not sure um how does age matter in learning another language well the common common sense or the most common attitude for this is that the earlier you start the better which is probably true it's probably true the earlier you get exposure to a language the the better it is for you but then again

older people often have more life experience they have more wisdom they have more knowledge they have more things to say they have more um yeah they have more perspective which is very useful when learning a language because um you know you can use all the knowledge that you've got of the world and apply that to the task of learning a language and and that can be that could be very helpful you know that can really help you to do it well and again Steve Kaufman is an example he's in his 70s I think and he

there he is you know spending his time working on the language um so um I I don't know again I'm not sure of the answer this is the thing this is why this is a continual debate because uh you know it seems to be very stretchy subject um how do our own individual how do I own unique individual differences like learning styles affect our ability to learn a new language the idea of learning style suggests that we all tend to learn in different ways now this is contested now most of this stuff is contested meaning

people disagree with it but the idea the the idea of there being learning styles is a little bit sort of um sketchy like people don't a lot of people disagree with the whole concept and in fact I read recently that the the entire idea has been debunked like proven to be false uh but the I remember studying this stuff during my Delta the idea being that there are these are things that we need to consider as teachers when teaching our students to learn English that they need to know that there are different learning styles and

learning what your style of learning is or your intelligence type is that can really help you to choose the right kind of learning for you so it may be still interesting to consider the idea that that maybe people learn in different ways and there isn't just one single way to learn a language it's not just like um you know you study the grammar rules and you do you know this kind of old-fashioned approach there might be other approaches and you have to keep searching until you find the one that's right for you but in terms

of learning styles we talk about things like visual Learners people who prefer to you know who who react well to visual stimulus we talk about uh kinesthetic Learners people who like to move and have some sort of physical movement in involved in their learning and then there's like the auditory Learners and the musical Learners and all these different learning styles as teachers we are taught about this stuff because it can encourage us to incorporate different types of tasks into tasks into lessons tasks that involve the students may be getting out of their seats and moving

around um you know tasks involving more visual aspects you know not so it's not just text on a page sitting down in front of text on a page or on a on a Blackboard or whiteboard or something but other things too um so the point there is that it might be worth remembering that maybe you will learn English more effectively in this way whereas your friend or some guy on the internet will learn their English more effectively in other ways and it's worth exploring these different approaches you've got to keep an open mind to learning

in different ways um next question what role does conscious attention play in language learning can we just soak up the language like a sponge if we immerse ourselves in the language or do we have to pay attention to the details in order to learn so two schools of thought one one idea is that you will just absorb language naturally you are a sponge and your brain will just soak up language if you expose it to the language and um so maybe comprehensible input is an example of this the input hypothesis that you know that you

just ex read lots and lots and lots of material listen to lots and lots of material and there's some sort of natural process where your brain just sort of absorbs or acquires it um or immerse yourself go and live in the country where the language is spoken and it will be around you all the time 24 hours a day you'll be hearing it seeing it being forced to use it all the time and so naturally we will accommodate ourselves to that environment and that means essentially acquiring the language that we need in order to operate

within it and those things seem to be somehow subconscious or unconscious learning like it's just learning as a consequence of trying to understand the book that you're reading or trying to survive in the city that you're living in or something or do we need to be more attentive and conscious in our learning meaning do we need to sit down and actually look through the grammar rules or when we're reading consciously check words and keep vocabulary lists and flash cards and you know have these methods that we can use to focus our attention on learning going

back to that other question of learning a first language and learning a second language maybe the the the immersion idea is similar to how we learn a first language and then the conscious attention is like the way we traditionally learn a second language but then again those things don't necessarily it's not as simple as that because if you if you think about it when you learn your first language like when I learned English I didn't just learn it through exposure and through just like trying to talk to my parents and stuff I also had classes

at school you know I did actually learn I did actually have some conscious learning I had to learn to read and to write I learned to spell I learned some kind of English grammar in my English language classes at school and stuff so you know there is some conscious attention involved in learning your first language too like I have had to consciously focus on writing and improve my writing in English and you know it's a constant thing I do actually have to consciously attend to my language learning of of my first language and similarly there

are lots of people who say that learning a second language should be less conscious it should be more about just interacting with uh with the language and letting language learning happen as a as a natural consequence so I don't know it's all a bit mixed up isn't it maybe it's the yin and yang I don't know um how does your first language influence how you learn a second language how does your first language influence how you learn a second language well I I mean I can certainly talk about how your first language affects the way

that you use the second language and it's massive it's absolutely huge so the reason for like 90 of the errors that we make when we are speaking or using our second language that the reason for those errors is most of the time due to influence from the first language so it's our first the the grammar part of our brain is telling us to use kind of the same grammar or structures or at least the way that we think and the way we structure language the way we produce language is very much dictated by those patterns

and structures from language one and a lot of the time when learning a language is about sort of trying to break down those um natural structures that come from L1 and to create new structures and learn the new structures and rhythms of the second language so L1 language one definitely influences language two how does it influence the way you learn a second language I'm not sure really I'm not sure how what I could say about that the way it influences the way you learn it uh maybe cultural stuff but that's not language but you know

maybe cultural things like generally the culture of what it means to learn a language in your country and you know so France France for example it's it's it's older Generations in France for them learning a language was about studying it on paper you know and doing that kind of conscious old-fashioned studying maybe grammar translations certainly starting with grammar rules learning them and you know that kind of structured approach so that's really more the the culture of language learning that exists in in your native culture that can affect the way you learn a second language and

certainly your use of your first language has a huge impact on the way you use your second language for example and I've mentioned this example before French people um will make lots of very common errors um just like every every person learning a second language you they but the errors can be traced back to French so they will say instead of I agree they'll say I am agree or I I am not agree when it should be I agree and I I don't agree or I disagree and that's because in French which is I am

agree you know and um other you know a whole host of other ones and of course pronunciation is a massive thing you know like again using French as an example uh in France they don't really have a th sound or or sound the th sound and so um when there is a th sound in English they will go you know they'll use a different sound and those errors are caused by the fact that that those th sounds are not in French similarly Japanese people are and L sounds [Music] are actually one sound and so R

and L uh can be a problem and that leads to people writing uh an L when it should be an r and the other way around and so on so you know obviously the first language has a huge impact on the second language and the next and the final question the in the introduction to this episode uh what are the most I mean in the introduction to this article because the the introduction to the episode is long gone now but um this final question what are the most effective language learning strategies in becoming a successful

language learner okay that's a huge question and that's going to be explored directly in the article so we'll we'll just kind of crack on with the article here and see what it says so let's call an everyday language learner an adult learner who is seeking to achieve long-term success in a language that they began learning in high school or later so what we're doing now is defining our our Baseline Benchmark for what a a normal everyday language learner is and it's a I think it's a good description a good definition I think there's probably um

fits most of us right trying to learn another language certainly most of you listening to this you are trying to learn English and I would categorize you probably as everyday language learners not that there's anything ordinary about you of course you're all completely unique and um special in in because you listen to this podcast but let's say that this fits your description everyday language learner an adult learner probably seeking to achieve long-term success in a language that they began learning in high school or later you probably started learning English at school um or maybe later

maybe uh you know maybe in adulthood and let's call success the ability to use the language for effective communication in a wide range of situations and settings and in order to achieve a range of goals that you are already comfortable accomplishing in your first language or first languages so the ability to use language for effective communication in a wide range of situations and settings in order to achieve a wide range of goals in other words think of being able to use the language as a vehicle for communication in these different things so a vehicle for

communication with different people so you should be able to use English effectively with different people so with family members with friends with teachers with doctors with bosses with colleagues with employees with bartenders with grocery store Clarks waiters and so on so I talked about this before didn't I when did I talk about this I haven't actually talked about this yet I've got an episode in the pipeline about different styles of English and the way that we adapt our English depending on the situation so yeah you need to be able to adapt your English depending on

the person you're talking to so that means like you know formal and informal language and levels of politeness and diplomacy and directness and indirectness and stuff so all those pragmatic things you should be able to use English to communicate through different genres and this relates to the episode that I'm working on which is going to be about how English changes depending on the situation that's some that's coming soon so through different genres so spoken discourse meaning how to construct spoken English professional emails medium posts like if you're writing you know should could you write an

article for a website like medium using English on the phone using English on social media all these different situations you should be able to do all of them you should be able to use English in different places so at home at school at work in hospitals at conferences uh in recreational settings again just another way of considering the way that in you should be able to adapt your English for these different um places people and situations and for different actions uh you should be able to use your second language for persuading for narrating for reporting

instructing joking warning praising blaming asking requesting agreeing disagreeing com complaining flirting gossiping right so all of these questions though are just a few of those being posed by second language acquisition researchers in a number of ways over the past four decades the field has been in existence questions which have led down all sorts of paths in their efforts to peel off the layers of the language learning onion and it has been a difficult onion to peel to say the least so basically um second language acquisition researchers these are academics researching the whole question of how

a second language is learned these people have been for for decades now have been searching for answers to the questions that I've just been talking about and the things that have just been mentioned at the beginning of this article it's a difficult onion to peel to peel and onion you peel off the layers to get to the core to get to the um you know the actual core truth in the middle of it okay so the bigger picture uh but for a language learner who wants to know what the research says about the best way

to learn another language how can you begin extracting practical insights from jargon-packed research articles or should you even bother so basically right there's lots of academics writing academic research papers into all different aspects of second language learning but for a normal person normal human like you the Layman right the lay person who um just wants to learn the best way to to to to acquire another language how can you get these insights from all these articles these academic papers how can you actually just get the basic advice okay um so the article continues a lot

of the research in SLA second language acquisition is very focused whether it be on how specific languages are acquired by Learners from certain linguistic and cultural backgrounds investigating the development of language competence from more cognitive or social theoretical perspectives or critically examining the ever-expanding language learning Market that seeks to profit on the desire among pretty much everyone on the planet to improve their Proficiency in another language hold on a minute uh Gavin Lam wait a minute what happened to that sentence I feel like there's a whole other Clause that's missing here whether it be on

how specific languages are required or this but yeah there's a Gavin there's a there's a clause missing in your sentence because it needs to be whether it be on la la la la la la la it's certainly difficult to find the conclusions whether it be on how specific languages are acquired by Learners from certain linguistic and cultural backgrounds investigating the development of language competence from more cognitive or social theoretical perspectives or critically examining the ever-expanding language learning Market that seeks to profit on the desire among pretty much everyone on the planet to improve their Proficiency

in another language whether it be this this or this we need another clause it seems to be difficult for everyone that's probably what it should be anyway but rather than spending too much time on all of that ah no sorry Gavin sorry the weather at B is actually connected to the previous Clause so a lot of the research in SLA is very focused whether it be on how uh whether it be on this this or this so it's a punctuation issue in the article so if I was to edit the article I would say that

actually this is all one sentence there shouldn't be a full stop after SLA is very focused anyway I'm getting distracted here right so anyway but rather than spending too much time on all of that says Gavin I'd like to zoom out a bit and get a bigger picture of second language acquisition and hopefully offer up a few insights from the SLA research for the average everyday language learner Thank You Gavin thank you very much so he's going to give us a sort of overview this is because I feel the research on language learning has not

only helped me to get a better grip on what the process of language learning involves but has also helped me see how I can begin relating the numerous theories findings and insights in SLA to my own language learning practice so all the research has helped him to get a better grip to get control on what the process of language learning involves it's also helped him to see how he can begin relating the theories and insights to his own learning practice so he's done it so he's going to help us do it too wading through the

swamp of SLA research wading wading is when you're walking through deep water or walking through like mud or something so in this case wading through the swamp of SLA research lots of SLA research everywhere it's difficult to get through it wading through the swamp of SLA research can be a bewildering experience ah where am I what's going on I'm confused and at first concrete strategies for language learning seem to be in small Supply so it's all a bit sort of vague and swampy and we need concrete strategies tell me exactly what to do these concrete

strategies seem to be in small Supply there aren't many of them this is because much of the research is concerned with the complex social and cognitive processes involved in language learning and not so much with prescribing practical strategies for learners so why is it difficult to kind of use academic research to help us learn it's because a lot of the time the research is all about what is going on when people learn languages it's about the processes the social processes right the the ways in which people interact and the cognitive processes what's going on in

our brains involved in language learning that seems to be what the research focuses on it's all about the way it works what's going on in the process of language learning and it's the research is not so interested with prescribing strategies prescribing is basically telling people exactly what to do so it's not interest often the research is not about prescribing specific strategies or telling Learners exactly how to learn and then he goes on although there is a growing body of research on language learning pedagogy aimed at providing useful insights for teachers and Learners so apparently there

is more and more research which is aimed at being more practical um the article continues Andrew Cohen who researches strategies for Learning and using a second language defines a language learning strategy as this so what is a language learning strategy it's this thoughts and actions consciously Chosen and operationalized by language Learners to assist them in carrying out a multiplicity of tasks from the very onset of learning to the most advanced levels of target language performance so this is the this is kind of typical academic language which is quite difficult to penetrate so what is a

language learning strategy I think you know but anyway here's the academic definition thoughts so things you think and actions things you do consciously chosen so things you've actually decided to do and think and operationalized meaning I suppose actually done by language Learners to assist them in carrying out a multiplicity of tasks so things you choose to think and choose to do in order to help you perform various tasks from the beginning of your learning to the very Advanced levels of language performance so basically the things you choose to think and do in order to help

you and the article says these include learn language learning strategies like strategies for ensuring the learning practicing and use of a new language in an already busy life so the things you choose to do when your life is very busy how you can squeeze language learning into your busy life strategies for monitoring one's everyday language learning and use so how do you actually keep a sense of whether you're making progress or not and strategies for remembering vocabulary deemed relevant and valuable so basically how do you remember all the stuff you're learning but in this post

I've tried to pull some of the biggest clumps of insight from a range of different research approaches in this field these insights have helped me to see the language learning process from diverse Vantage points so it's given him perspective he can look at language learning from all these different perspectives and perhaps most importantly begin making connections to my daily practice as a language learner so it's helped him think about the way he's learning a language too so a trifecta a sort of three-point list three point approach for Effective language learning these three approaches to language

learning are somewhat obvious but have been described in various Ways by researchers coming from all sorts of different perspectives in SLA so Gavin is boiled it down to three main points okay now if I was a different kind of um uh English language podcaster I'd be selling this as like the three secrets of language learning right I don't know why people always refer to these things as Secrets because they're really not Secret in fact there's like you know many many many researchers publishing articles all about it people are constantly talking about these things in Po

in the public forum making videos about them training people how to tell them you know there's whole Industries and academic institutions uh devoted to understanding how we learn language and then trying to share that knowledge and sell that knowledge as much as possible none of these things are secrets anyway here are those three points that have been distilled by um Gavin here in his article number one learn the language in context number two learn The Language by using it for specific purposes number three learn the language through face-to-face interaction and online works too all right

let's see what Gavin means so number one learn the language in context what do I mean by learning a language in context I think SLA researcher Bonnie Norton puts this well when she writes this second language Learners need to struggle to appropriate the voices of others they need to learn to command the attention of their listeners they need to negotiate language as a system and as a social practice and they need to understand the practices of the communities with which they interact what does that mean personally I think that it's this it's the last part

of this paragraph this quote from a researcher called Bonnie Norton it's the last part of that that is that is most relevant that that you need to negotiate language as a system and as a social practice and you have to understand the practices of communities with which you interact but it's that middle bit really you need to you need to see language as a system and as a social practice language is a social practice so it means that language is a thing that we do when we socialize with people okay that is what it's a

social system it is not some sort of abstract set of information that we have to learn it's not for example you know the periodic table uh remembering all of the elements in the periodic table and all that stuff no language is a thing that we can do English is something you do it's not just something you know right English is not just something you know it's something you can do and you should always focus on being able to do English not just know or learn English but according to Bonnie Norton to learn a language properly

you've got to understand that it is a social system and it's a a thing that we do rather than a thing that we learn so Gavin says um this is all to say language should be seen as embedded in Social and cultural practices and finding language learning resources that give you access to these different interpersonal linguistic and Community contexts when learning the language is a good way to go so I would put it in two ways that language learning should be done in context one you should probably absorb language in context when you are discovering

it so rather than just learning words or grammar in an abstract way like instead of going so today I'm going to learn the present perfect tense and you learn a grammatical form and how it works and how it's applied I mean that you know that can be a way to do it but that is out of context okay and instead of just learning a list of words you learn those words in a context that means that those the grammar system the vocabulary uh items are part of a a greater system of meaning you know um

and that you focus on that meaning first you focus on that linguistic context and it's within that context that you can learn really what language means and how it works so you should learn language in context so you read articles and you pick out language from it and you can see how the language Works within that article when you realize the article has a certain function and you know all that sort of thing so language should be seen as embedded in Social and cultural practices okay so for example learning emailing we learn about the pragmatics

of emailing the way that the relationship that you have with the person you're writing to affects the way that your English is constructed okay so it's rather than just um here is the language of emails it's more like here's language which will have certain effects and here's the language you should do in response to an email like this you know uh and then finding language learning resources that give you access to these different interpersonal linguistic and community community contexts when learning the language is a good way to go so you should try to learn English

from resources that present English in this way so hopefully my podcast does that you know because I present you with conversations with people and you can see actual you know English being used in a interactive way uh often it's conversations with my friends and you can see how English is used to be humorous and to kind of build relationships and stuff um number two learn The Language by using it for specific purposes so learning by doing learning by doing seems to be one of the keys to learning another language as it allows people to gain

both knowledge of various aspects of the language as well as to gain experience using the language so kind of like task based learning so you don't just learn English as an isolated set of grammar rules and vocab and pronunciation rules and phonemes but you learn to use language to achieve certain things okay you use it for specific purposes Gavin says uh now this is John Norris quoted by Gavin in his article he's another SLA researcher um to achieve the benefits of task-based practice SLA researcher John Norris writes we must first accept that language develops not

as accretion of discrete bits of knowledge but through a series of holistic experiences so we learn language languages we learn language through having overall experiences with it and we don't develop it by kind of gaining okay now I learn present simple now I learn present perfect now I learn this first conditional now I learn the second conditional instead we learn language and learn forms by sort of now I talk about my abilities and things I can do now I talk about my habits I can talk about the things I do every day and now I

can use language to make polite requests and now I can use language to make indirect requests to be polite you know we see uh language develops through a series of overall Global experiences rather than just taking little bits of uh language bit by bit um Gavin says through using the language from the very first day and for purposes that allow you to experience the language in meaningful Ways by doing specific tasks with the language you can build your language competency up holistically as one holistic experience at a time rather than just one noun or verb

at a time this sort of thing is reflected in some language learning course books which focus on rather than focus on grammar forms like I've learned how to conjugate um third conditionals instead the books encourage Learners to reflect on their learning by sort of saying you know here's a checklist of things that at the end of this unit you should be able to do so can you consider these things can you reflect on the past can you express regret about the past can you speculate about the past or can you talk about you know your

plans for the future so those are holistic experiences you know are you able to negotiate um uh are you able to uh discuss price in a business negotiation rather than can you construct um uh can you construct first and conditional sentences you know and thirdly learn the language in face-to-face interaction um so this basically means learning The Language by using it with other humans okay lastly learning language in interaction with other real life human beings is an obvious point for anyone who has had the experience of studying a language on their own prior to a

trip only to be met later with disappointment when they struggle to start up a simple conversation with a native speaker so the point here is that like a lot of English people will say like they're going to France on holiday so they think I'll brush up on my French they get a French you know teach yourself French book and they start going through sort of exercises in there or even just a phrase book of like um you know excuse me can you show me the way to the bank please you know those sorts of um

Basics but then when it comes to actual interaction with a human it all goes wrong so according to Gavin we need to actually learn the language in face-to-face interaction um I mean that's not to say that you can't practice your speaking on your own which you can do I would say that it's just important to try to use authentic material when you're practicing English so that means shadowing real conversations but also trying to simulate real conversations too so that you in a sense have conversations with yourself or you pretend or imagine use your creativity think

outside the box and try to create in your mind realistic scenarios in which you have to actually use language you know in response to a question that you weren't expecting or something like that you know you've got to try and recreate um situations and practice English in those situations in order to make sure that you're able to use language on the go right rather than just doing it on paper I hope I'm being clear now while the process this is Gavin again while the process of language learning should involve all kinds of receptive interactions with

literature movies podcasts social media and more so he's saying although it's important to absorb to listen and read a lot he continues the original home of language learning is in face-to-face com conversation yeah of course we know this don't we that um it's important not to forget the the value of um actually engaging in conversation with um with people in order to practice and so you know that's that often involves spending money doesn't it you know you might have to go to italki or some other similar service or just find a person to practice with

and um you know shout out some money and have some one-to-one lessons or conversation practice time um you can still go to teacherlook.co.uk talk to get um a discount with italki by the way um if you want to use them so I mean that's a fairly obvious Point uh but you've got to practice English by actually talking to a human being you can replicate you can kind of simulate those those situations you could do lots of types of speaking practice on your own but ultimately it's really important to actually uh have face-to-face conversations uh Gavin

continues having to negotiate meaning with other speakers on the Fly sort of spontaneously seems to be one of the key ways to develop our language ability and with a range of new online language learning resources now available for Motivated language Learners to take part in second language interaction this is getting much easier to do so he's probably referring to the fact that companies like italki have now made it easier for you to actually find Opportunities to talk to other human beings in English yeah so the article continues develop a daily practice hey I would say

develop daily practice hone your language learning intuition through systematic research we can provide fantastic descriptions and theories of the various facets of the language learning process basically research means that we can now describe the different ways that language learning happens the different sides or faces of language learning but things get a little a bit less crisp when we begin making General prescriptions for how best to go about learning another language so we know how to describe the way that language learning happens but when it comes to actually telling people how to do it it seems

that we are things get less clear the science if we can call it a science of second language acquisition can tell us a lot about both the universal aspects of language learning as well as the individual idiosyncrasies that make each of our language learning Journeys unique so it can tell us about how we learn language the key for the language learner however is to become a researcher of yourself in a way bridging your knowledge of both the language and the language learning process along with your own experiences in developing a unique path towards your language

learning goals so this is kind of what I said earlier so there's all this research that tells us how a lot of people learn languages but when it comes to actually the practicalities of how you should do it you've got to take the research and the conclusions of it but also your own experiences and the things that work for you and finding a way to bridge those two things together um towards your own language learning goals and working out what works for you so this might be a good point to ask what your goals are

exactly what are your goals in learning English what exactly is it that you want to achieve which is a it's always a good idea to have specific goals achievable ones um and Gavin has listed some possible goals have people so maybe your goal is to have people think that your second language pronunciation is native or nearly native I mean that's a controversial one people talk about that all the time why is that controversial Luke why would it be controversial for for a language learner to expect or want to achieve native level pronunciation there's nothing wrong

with it at all it's a perfectly good goal to have the the only issue is that it's incredibly difficult um it seems that some people are more able to do it than others I mean we take the example of Paul Taylor for example uh I said example twice um we take the example of Paul Taylor for instance and uh Paul is has this weird knack for getting the pronunciation just right maybe he's cheated maybe you learned French when he was a kid maybe he learned Spanish when he was a kid I would I wouldn't be

surprised though that if he learned Brazilian Portuguese he would sound like he was from Sao Paulo or if he's if he learned Croatian he would sound like he was you know like from Croatia he wouldn't have a really strong English accent in his other languages I would predict anyway so the point why is it controversial to to want to sound like a native well it's it's very difficult and some for some people you know you might never get there you might never achieve that okay and it's and and anyway maybe it's not necessary maybe you

don't really need to sound like a native because you know non-native English is also a valid form of English and if people can understand you this is the most important thing there's nothing wrong with having a bit of an accent so that's that uh but also it might be damaging to your confidence if you have this very high aim which is to sound exactly like a native speaker and if that's unachievable which I'm sure it is for some people for all sorts of reasons then you have to think maybe you know to redefine that aim

and not be too uh hurt or upset or or um disillusioned if you don't reach that high aim it's good to have high expectations for yourself but also it's important to be realistic and not to feel bad if you don't achieve those aims if you're setting goals for yourself you should set realistic achievable ones rather than ones which are maybe gonna gonna just end up in a sense of failure um maybe your goal is to get the second language pragmatics right in numerous speaking situations meaning learning how to adapt your English for different situations I

would argue that that's a more important goal you know um maybe you want to have only negligible grammar errors in your oral language maybe you want to get your spoken English up to a level where you're not making any mistakes a very good aim to have but again you know we have to take a balanced approach and don't feel too um put off by the prospect of making errors some people are so scared to make errors that they just don't say anything at all which obviously is not not the right approach you've got to be

willing to make mistakes and stuff but you know aiming for aiming for virtually no grammar errors in your oral languages of course a very respectable and decent aim to have um you just got to be willing to to you know do both you've got to make the mistakes you've got to get all the mistakes out before you can then expect to just like get it perfect every time um another aim might be to have your second language vocabulary trip off your tongue relatively effortlessly so the ability to be fluent and to recall and use uh

vocab to have a high level of active vocabulary and to have the fluency to use it all another very important aim I would say that's up there as being one of the most important ones to being able to to to to to be fluent and to get the right words out at the right moment at the right speed and at the right time uh maybe you want to take an active part in a meeting conducted entirely through the L2 this is a good and specific aim a lot of people out there uh I know a

lot of you out there have to use English in meetings at work and it's a source of great anxiety for you because if you can't take part if you don't understand what people are saying and you can't express yourself then it's a horrible feeling and also you get the impression the boss is looking at you as well so focusing on being able to take part in a meeting would be a good idea because that gives you specific a specific situation and specific types of language a specific style of language to focus on so that could

be good you know you practice various ways of getting your English ready for meetings speaking skills listening skills vocabulary specific to this to the to the work area that you're in um and maybe an aim could be to read and critique work in your field of interest in the second language so this would be maybe it's learning to to be academic I mean obviously you know like as an English teacher when I get new students at school or if I'm starting a new course or something I will interview the students first and work out what

their needs are if it's a business English course it's important to know what aspect of what area of business they work in and what types of communication situations they're going to be in whether it's negotiations or presentations or whatever um you've got to learn the English that you use for those situations and you know narrowing down narrowing it down to that specific kind of English is a good idea in this case it could be learning to use English for academic purposes right reading and critiquing work or you want to express yourself in written language at

a professional level in the second language again a really good aim because a lot of you will need to write reports write emails and things like that the Journey of learning another language is just as much a journey in learning to develop a daily practice just as with writing meditation and exercise by this I mean that learning another language is about fostering the energy motivation and consistency that any kind of skill learning requires of someone so again going back to that point I made at the beginning it's about finding a method that works for you

and then actually doing it and finding the ability to turn it into a regular habit the five T's time time time time the 5ps practice practice practice practice the five H's habit habit habit habit habit five R's rabbit rabbit rabbit rabbit rabbit why have we got five rabbits I don't know it just felt right at the time but the point is finding a habit doing something in English regularly every single day uh listening to this podcast but also finding other ways to practice on a regular basis you know again we go back to these conclusions

that I've made before Gavin continues with his article perhaps most importantly this is why whatever path you choose towards learning a new language the most effective one will be the one that most resonates with you and as a consequence will be the one that you stick with for the Long Haul so the going back to my first Point again the best way to learn a language the best method is the one that works with you the one that resonates with you if something resonates it makes a deep long lasting sound like for example those bells

those meditation Bells boom right it's got a deep rev resonating sound so if an idea or method resonates with you it leaves a long lasting deep sort of uh vibration in you something that touches you that you feel that lasts a long time that really kind of uh speaks to you and really vibrates you personally so the most effective language learning method is the one that really that you really uh connect with and as a consequence that is the one that you will stick with that's the one that you'll continue doing for the Long Haul

like long term over a long term difficult process so find the one that works for you and do that whatever you the language learning method that works is the one that you actually do a lot of you know a lot of the time a lot of the problem a lot of the reason why people don't improve in a language is because they don't actually do any kind of practice like me for example I spend my time speaking English all the time and um you know I don't actually spend time in French as much as I

should do and as a result you know the the progress isn't being made as quickly as it could be it's not rocket science is it really when you think about it who knew spending time and practice on a language every day is what works it's slow you know like playing playing an instrument playing the guitar you know you just find a way to enjoy doing it if you enjoy playing the guitar for four hours a day you're gonna make a lot of progress um it's obvious really intuitions are formed at the crossroads of knowledge and

experience says HD Brown a researcher of second language acquisition intuitions intuitions are things that you feel you don't necessarily know they're just like something you feel like that's the that's the Sweet Spot isn't it in in in English let's say it's like how do you know that it's it depends on not it depends of right now you could learn it but often it's just that you feel it you just what naturally feels right is it depends on the situation not it's depend of the situation that it's depend of the situation is wrong and it should

not feel right that something should feel wrong when you hear that and that's intuition so there's that on one hand intuition is important because you need to have a sort of intuitive sense of right and wrong in English and a lot of the time that comes from exposure and practice but anyway intuitions are formed at the crossroads of knowledge and experience knowledge the stuff you know experience the things that you've seen and heard over the years by learning by learning about the language learning process paying attention to our own experience as language Learners and by

constantly taking risks on our language learning Journey that might reveal insights into into our own language learning practice we can begin developing our intuition about how best to begin and persist on one of the most awesome enriching and rewarding Journeys there is if I might say so myself so Gavin is very positive about the experience of learning a language he's saying that we need to learn a sense of intuition a sense of a general feeling of what feels right and wrong for you in your language learning the only way to do that is to experiment

and try all the different ways and to get out of your comfort zone the more you are out of your comfort zone the more ground you will cover the more possible ways of learning a language you will experiment with and the more you'll develop that sense of what feels right for you the process of language learning is complex as complex as the individual quirks of people who Embark upon the Journey of learning a new language I've got such an itchy nose apparently talking for more than an hour makes my nose itch well so language learning

is complex it's as complex as the individual quirks like little character traits of people so basically learning a language is as complex as the people who learn language right um and it's also as complex as the multitude the many uh multitude of languages and language learning situations that people find themselves in the world basically it's complicated um each language lesson is in some ways a unique drama one researcher writes and understanding these unique dramas that populate Our Lives as language Learners is what I think makes both researching SLA and learning another language so fascinating and

inevitably a challenging but rewarding process of self-discovery each language lesson is a is a unique drama meaning every moment that you feel you make progress in learning a language is like a little it's probably come about from some moment of drama I mean that could mean just like a misunderstanding that you learn from or just an experience that you have that leads you to learning something and remembering it it's a process of self-discovery Steve Kaufman said it was a process it was a a journey of Discovery didn't he a voyage of discovery it's not just

a technical feat um a difficult thing to do but an expansion of perspective learning another language isn't just about the acquisition of a new skill language Learners know from their experience that it is also about an expansion of perspective of the world they live in this point is echoed by bialy stock and hakuta's 1994 book on second language acquisition learning a second language is not simply a technical feat it says it is an expansion of perspective we live in a world community that speaks more than seven thousand distinct languages we cannot hope to understand ourselves

and our own place in this world without understanding the enormous impact of linguistic and cultural diversity on the Human Social condition recognizing the implications of learning a second language and understanding something of the process of exactly recognizing the implications of learning a second language and understanding something of the process of its acquisition Propel us towards this goal recognizing the implications of learning a second language meaning what it really means an understanding of something of the process of his acquisition so basically he's saying that the more we learn how language learning happens the more perspective we

can get on it and that's ultimately good for achieving your goals so um Gavin says just remember that when cultivating your daily language learning practice the important thing is to maintain a consistent sensitivity to your own unique insights and intuitions about your language learning Journey as you build it up one experience at a time and of course listen to Luke's English podcast he didn't actually put that at the end Gavin didn't actually write that at the end I added that in so basically again the point I made at the beginning when you're developing your own

daily practice for learning English it's important to be sensitive to what you learn yourself it's sensitive to what works for you in order to build the right kinds of habits and build your learning one experience at a time and of course listen to Luke's English podcast best of luck um and there are some notes here as well from Gavin saying this was the first one of the first posts he wrote after he'd done his PhD in 2014 bloody blah blah blah so there you go thank you to Gavin Lam for writing that that was my

take on his um his article there um okay so there you go listeners I hope that this has been interesting and not just confusing it's quite hard to get a grip on this whole language learning thing but um it goes back to those old conclusions that it's a question of spending time with the language finding ways to make it work for you experimenting with all sorts of different approaches and practices um and so on you could you could refer back to one of my older episodes It's called how to learn English I can't remember uh

the number if I go into my episode archive I'll find it how to learn how to learn English episode 669 and in that one I try to give you as much possible uh in that one I try to give you as much advice as possible about learning English across the four skills so lots of specific um ideas for what you can do to improve your speaking your listening your reading and your writing okay episode 669 if you like more of this kind of thing but otherwise that's it for this episode thank you so much for

listening I'm very curious to get your insights too do you have any comments do you have any points to make about the best way to learn a language how do we we learn languages what has worked for you sometimes that's the best way to to talk about this is to get very specific and personal and just talk about your own personal experiences so let's think about this let's try and pinpoint this thing which is um experimenting with different methods of practicing and finding the ones that work for you so tell us about the different things

that you've tried and tell us the ones that work for you and why they work for you okay I hope people do comment on this obviously I've I've asked you to do that right now at the end of this episode where um only only the hardcore have got through to this part but anyway I'm curious to know what you have to say thank you for listening to my show thank you for listening to my podcast um don't forget to like And subscribe leave me a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast that's a

great way of promoting the show tell your friends to listen to Luke's English podcast share the episode on social media and also if you want to get my regular lessons in which I teach you grammar vocab and pronunciation when I say teach you grammar vocab and pronunciation I'm there to basically sort of help you and I give you resources and opportunities to do different types of practice we've talked about these different things there's memory tests there's stories I use lots of stories in my premium content and also there's pronunciation practice where I give you the

opportunity to repeat after me I give you I take stories break them down into pronunciation pieces read out those pronunciation sections you repeat each line after me and you know I try to cover all the different bases so if you want to get my premium episodes too you can just add them to your podcast subscription in your podcast app on your phone just go to teacherlook.co.uk premium info to get all the information you need about Luke's English podcast premium which is my paid service and if you sign up you will become a stakeholder in Luke's

English podcast you will be a true stakeholder someone who is investing in the show and investing in all the whole in the whole thing and the premium subscription allows me to keep doing this on my own terms it means I don't have a boss okay all right good thank you for listening I will speak to you in the next one but now it's just time for me to say goodbye bye bye bye