Chat with Luca - Luca Lampariello & Richard Simcott @LucaLampariello @SpeakingFluently

[Music] today I am joined by a very special guest somebody who has been with me since the start of the whole polyglot movement language learning movement online lucer and I um made friends really because of a video that he put out on YouTube and then I put out a video on YouTube inspired by him and his Brilliance and wanted to really get together to meet up to become friends and we did just that and so I've never really looked back from that moment and every time we meet up it's like no time has passed we

can hug each other and talk to each other about anything and it's always such a pleasure and the polygot conference is something very special with Luca as well because really it was an idea that we talked about together in Poland and for both of us poan is a really special place for that reason because we wanted to have people come together from the online community in person because that was this the little thing that was missing and since then we've come back year on year and Luca has been wonderful in coming and speaking at a

number of events and also at the sister event that probably got Gathering and traveling around the world meeting people going to different things and he's obviously internet famous now so I mean I'm glad that he could he could be with us uh yeah he's absolutely wonderful I can see him pretending that he doesn't know this but he does and he offers some really cool advice with language learning I mean most of it I completely disagree with but he's he's pretty he's he's got some good stuff in there as well but in all seriousness Luca thank

you so much for joining me and thank thank you for your friendship over all these years as well thank you Richard for the lovely presentation it's an it's it's my honor to have to see you to talk to you and it's always a pleasure to talk to you to see you and you're right every time we meet just hug and if time hasn't passed it's just amazing you know so and um back to you everything you said about me I think about you so um you know so it's always amazing to talk to you in

real life I love it Lin tell me more Lino tell me more about how good I am you know it I can't flatter more a balloon I'm K it's not it's not true when when I wrote to lukino about uh all of the the sort of the idea of this uh topic of having a Q&A session talking about languages sort of just having a an informal chitchat and taking questions from the public as well he was like yeah absolutely and I said is there anything you want to talk about and he said the intermediate plateau

and I was like okay let's do it and I'm interested to know what he's got to say because I don't think the thing exists so I'm interested to know what L's got to say about the intermediate Plateau Luca what is the intermediate Plateau as you define it very interesting I want to premise this by saying that um sometimes Richard and I disagree on some things which is great and it's actually the reason why when you know this is this is a premise the reason why I believe that when people look for methods I I think

they have to look for principles more than methods because successful language Learners learn in very different ways I still remember you know I have this bidirectional translation method which I use to learn languages as a beginner and uh Richard very candidly told me one time I would never do this lukino you know just because we're different and he he has his own way of learning I have my own way of learning and the most important thing is when you talk you watch Richard's videos or anybody who's been successful in language rning just extract the good

things and make it yours and you can find your own way you can just use these ingredients as a recipe to learn uh to learn any foreign language so having said that with that premise I would say what is this intermediate PLO thing um let's say that in in general when it comes to skill acquisition without delving into these like uh very complicated terms in linguistics Etc but in skill development you have mainly three areas you have the so-called beginner area let's simplify here because it's a little bit more complicated than that but for the

sake for the sake of Simplicity we have the beginner zone or the beginner phase or the beginner stage whatever you want to call it then you have the intermediate stage and then you have the so-called Advanced stage and mind you this is in literature so it's it's it's been you know it's something that has been dis been discussed for a decades now um and the intermediate Plateau or in the intermediate phase is that phase of langu language learning where you're past the so-called beginner uh place or beginner phase where you were just you know you

don't know anything of the language you've been learning it for a little bit maybe for three months and you're still using course books uh to understand the structure of the language the intermediate Zone on the other hand is where you already figured that out you already know how the structure of the language Works maybe you finished for example a course course book course book like aimil or you have followed another program for 3 to 6 months and you got the foundation down so to speak so you understand how the grammar Works our pronunciation works but

you still cannot understand movies or you cannot understand for example you can it's difficult for you to read a book I believe that if if you've heard of CFR or a common European framework for languages it's a European framework they classify this zone so to speak between let's say um a A2 and B2 where B2 is fluency meaning that you have uh very good command of the language you're able for example to attend University lectures you're able to read books and you're able to watch movies and understand at least the gist of that's where I

would say between A2 and B1 for those who know those labels that's the intermediate zone now so you know enough that the course books become boring but you don't know enough uh to enjoy the language out a where you can just live the language without having to sit down and learn I don't know if this is um you know I know that you don't believe in the intermediate Zone richer but this is my definition you know everybody's got a different definition and and for me the fact that I Define things this way really helps me

in the way I learn because if I have three main zones or areas I know exactly what to do in uh Zone one get a course book learning with a birir and translation do it for 45 or 60 minutes a day that's how when and what then in the intermediate stage I have a series of techniques or strategies that adapt to that kind of skill level because you have to remember that you cannot use one single thing or one activity the whole throughout the whole language path because you know your skills change so something that

is at the beginning is pretty exciting I guess for you as well uh uh Richard going to get a course book everything is new but after 3 months you look at it and say this is boring I want to move to uh move on to other stuff so you constantly have to change the way you learn what you're using in order to learn and the intermediate zone is is particularly interesting because I believe that the in the beginner Zone and in the intermediate stage that's where a lot of Learners kind of you know give up

raise their hands and and I say can't continue anymore because this is too difficult so that's why I wanted to talk about it in okay I I I like how you've described it you set the scene very well and I think I you know I I'm on board with the whole concept of what you described I think it's the semantics from my point of view of because the the idea of a plateau of not moving anywhere is for me the that's my stumbling block because I think mentally it gives this imagery of of you leveling

out in your language learning and I I don't that's where I disagree with the idea of an intermediate Plateau I suppose I think it's just the gradients are less noticeable because when you first learn a language you go up really quite drastically and then the gradient flattens out a bit but I don't think it's necessarily a plateau if you're actually continuing to to work on it in the same way as we think of a plateau of a on top of a mountain that's maybe just completely flat so I think that's probably it's just semantics but

what you described I'm on board with luk know we are we're in the same boat the same team we are united yeah no I while while you were talking I I hope you can see it because I'm using a DSLR camera and it changes the focus so I I I guess you I was drawing this I hope you can see it I hope so let's see if it's possible so basically what happens is that uh people tend to expect the language learning you know the skill development is linear while it flattens and you were describing

because uh I'm unfortunately you know when you get better then the return of investment gets smaller this is in terms of vocabulary in terms of skill so you say well I just got to be be I don't know to B one so now it's my my language running is gonna the Skyrocket it's actually the quite the opposite unless and and here I want to you know my terrible rowing you're right it's never really flat it there's never one single P moment in time where your language skills are frozen because our our brain is plastic it

changes all the time so if you don't practice say a language and you go to a party you've been practicing say I don't know Serbian or Danish for three months and people are like wow you speak so well then you forget about it you don't learn for two months or three months and your skills go down so it's never really flat the problem is that if it it becomes kind of flat or stalls but never completely flat let's say you're a maintenance mode so you're not moving towards the next level when you engage with a

language in a way where you just I what I call Simple practice instead of purposeful practice or deliberate practice and what I mean by that let me give you a very concrete example of what of what it means unfortunately uh you know I I believe that the the main rule of language learning very simple Stephen crashion is the man in this regard he explains it everything I know you talk to him he explains everything so clearly it don't make sense because it's as simple as it is true that in order to learn a language you

have to get massive input if you watch movies read books and you do all that stuff you know talk to friends then the language is going to grow in you subconsciously and consciously there's one thing though that I I disagree with the whole thing both with Steve and stepen crashion but also uh with Steve Kaufman I love everything they say just what this thing in in this regard I'm a little bit different I add on top of that which I consider a layer that is absolutely necessary for language growth I add kind of something that

little something that is called deliber practice meaning that I do things in especially when I get to the stage where I know that my language skills are going to stall I use deliberate practice in order to keep improving you might be wondering what is deliberate practice so uh let's say that simple practice and deliberate practice are two modes of learning modes and uh when I came up with this idea I actually realized that this is something that has been discussed uh in U I think it was berley by I don't remember the name of these

two I think these two authors but they created this amazing course on learning how to learn these are they call I think they call it intensive and diffus mode but the concept is exactly the same simple practice is something that you do um for example that you would do when you are engaging in some activity in your own native language Let me Give an example for example reading you're just reading a book that's simple practice or practice you're just reading or you're watching a movie uh in in your native language let's talk about your native

language first or you're chatting with a friend you know in a in a pub so this is kind of simple practice deliver practice or purposeful practice they're slightly different but the concept is the same is that you do something with the specific aim of improving your language skills so on the one hand let's talk about the four main areas of language learning reading a book for the sake of reading it like you're sprawled on the couch you're relaxing you're reading the Lord of the Rings you can do that if you know English well enough so

that you can engage in extensive reading if you can't and you are in the so-called intermediate Zone then if you're reading a book or an article it's good practice to take one page or two pages this is called intensive reading and dissect it there are so many Tools in which you can immediately kind of create a translation and you can understand the con content that's intensive and that's deliberate practice speaking you're talking to a friend in a pub that's speaking you're using the language in order to to to be able to do that you have

to have a certain level before you get to the level you might want to engage in conversations with your tutor on I toai where the tutor helps you he's friendly he knows it's a kind of very conducive let's say an environment conducing for learning you record a conversation you choose a topic beforehand you talk about it you get feedback over your grammar errors mistakes and whatnot then you re listen to the conversation and you try to um learn upon that that's deliberate practice uh for writing that's the same thing one thing is to write a

journal in your own native native language or in your target language but you have to get there you have to be able to to to have a certain level and on the other hand if you have a lower level you can engage in deliberate writing you write something you get feedback preferably live and then you proove up on that so this is across this the the let's say the all areas of language learning and that's where you have to balance both simple practice and deliberate practice in order to improve because you just if you think

about it if you just engage in deliberate practice then you get burned out it's something that becomes a chore you know oh I have to do I have to sit down I have to so what I normally do when I want to recommend my students and we're doing that in this in this course I created is that we kind of balance the two things so you engage in simple practices kind of a reward and then but you also balance it with deliver practice so that you keep both running and walking at the same time I

see it like walking and running a hill you know just where the first part of the hail the hill until you reach B2 is you have to walk and run at the same time if you just run you get burned out if you just walk you get there very slowly that's uh you know my my theory and also my practice I've been doing this for years and it works you know um well one one last thing I wanted to say Richard the reason why a lot of people get you know their their language learning stalls

is because they tend to do simple practice they watch something they listen to a podcast they read something that's all fine and dandy but unfortunately uh unless you're Richard or another incredible guy who learn who has a maybe photographic memory for for most of us Mortals um reading just or listening to a podcast just once is not enough you have to find ways to focus uh better on what you're doing and extract things uh across you know through a step-by-step process and and this is backed up by science and it works if you're willing to

put that in practice I think this is the thing isn't it it's the um it doesn't go in by osmosis is the thing with languages it's something we do there is an element of working at it as as well and yes we can yes we can sort of absorb languages if we're in an environment where no one speaks any other language but our brain still has to be prepped and primed and ready to accept the language right because you get people who live in countries all of their lives and can barely get by in day-to-day

Communications in the language of the of the country so even with all of that on your doorstep doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to you're going to learn the language right absolutely um I think the main problem of this is first that people are not all not you guys watching this I'm pretty sure you're the exception that confirms the rule but a lot of people tend to be lazy when it comes to language learning they they they choose the laziest pattern which is okay I'm just listening and just uh watching videos um I remember there

was one guy who sent me a message and he said I've been watching videos in French for two years and I still can't speak it or still don't speak it well or I still have a hard time you know understanding here and there because he was just engaging in simple practice I think if he had done a little bit more of active thing you know that that's what I disagree in part with those who say that you just get massive input and then it's all going to happen unfortunately it's not that automatic it might be

the case for languages that are really similar to yours so say if you're Italian and if you watch uh if you expose yourself to just simple you know just simple practice for hours and hours and say Spanish or even Portuguese it there's a good chance you're going to learn The Language by exposure because the language is similar if you're trying it with Georgian or with Russian or with other languages and you know it's G to be very difficult or Arabic for that matter because the language structure is so diff different that just reading a text

and you know even if it has a translation and it's not that easy to learn you can you can there are ways of learning without any translation but I think we're shooting ourselves in the foot when we're we we we avoid using translation because we think that the gra So-Cal grammar translation method is old it's how you use it the accounts nowadays we have amazing tools to speed up the process it's how you use a tool to accounts you look at a hammer a hammer can either kill someone or build a house you can do

both things so the same thing is with the tools that you have if you use them properly um I think that you can do amazing things the problem is also you know the willingness of doing that long term because the it takes a long time to reach V2 I know I shouldn't say that because it might sound discouraging but it takes time it takes months and it takes a couple of years to get a very good level in a language and if you know that you know and the most important thing is to work every

day for 30 45 minutes better than 30 UH 60 better than 45 but then you have to find the time and you have to find the will also to engage in both practices not enough just to throw yourself on the bed and and watch a YouTube video you know and luuka you mentioned using tools that are available to us and there are a number of them that are some of them very famous and Tomaso mentioned one in the comments which I sort of want to pick up on now because I think it's quite a nice

thing to do um dualingo is that something that's going to help you in your language learning is it something you've used so um this is a provocative question look he's giggling so let me let me let me say that um I I'm not saying I'm I'm against uh apps but I've never used an app to learn a language so I'm not saying that all apps are bad or anything um the appalling thing is that you know I when I talk to a random person you know meet someone of the party oh I'm learning Spanish with

dual lingo that's what they normally say especially from from the US but not only right so before it was Rosetta Stone now it's dualingo like guess um that um you know things are the way they are for those who don't know in general about language learning but I believe that when I'm talking about tools so before before we talk about my tools or the tools I use let me preface this again by saying that if you want to use apps be it SRS systems Anki uh dual lingo Babble you're free to do that um if

you want to use uh I think I heard of speakly as well that it's it's good you can use them on top of what you normally do my the base of the pyramid the main idea is for me and that's a fundamental rule of language learning both in the beginning and at the intermediate stage is to get EX get exposure to Rich compelling You Know Rich compelling uh interesting content uh Rich compelling and comprehensible these are the three main uh characteristics of content Stephen crash talks about it in know wonderful video that is free to

watch he's all his stuff is free I highly recommend you go to his channel and watch this video I don't remember which one but if you write these you know comprehensible content you will find it like if you do that then you can use all the apps you want on top of that you can do stuff but if you get exposed to a a rich comprehensible interesting content uh then language learning is going to happen it's no matter what now what does it mean that something is Rich and something is interesting and something is comprehensible

Rich means that it contains stuff that you do not know if you watch a YouTube video that you understand completely you're not learning much we're talking about growing here we're not talking about maintenance we're talking about learning more words learning more Expressions so if the content is Rich then it means that it contains some some contents some part portions of it that you do not understand if it's really incomprehensible meaning that you're listening to apoc is way to difficult you're not going to listen to it so you have to find The Sweet Spot which is

called The goldilock Zone in literature where something is not too difficult something is not too easy so it contains some stuff that you um you still don't know that's the first thing okay Rich that's very important then you have interesting we come from years of school where we do stuff that are that is super boring like they gave us these terrible articles to read or the stuff to read well now you have the possibility of doing your own research and find something that is interesting I was just before this interview I was watching um astronium

that's you know in Greek super interesting amazing stuff I said oh my gosh this is on YouTube and I can watch such such an amazing content if the content is amazing I push through even if it's you know it's not 100% comprehensible that that video specific video I was watching didn't have subtitles but I understood 70 or 80% of it now for the interesting part comprehensible as I was saying before um you know back in the days when uh also Steven crash was talking about the the interesting comprehensible input theory he he but in general

we're you know you heard a lot we heard a lot about graded readers when it comes to reading nowadays you have tools and I'm GNA just say a couple a couple of tools that have completely that changed it all for those who are willing to use them we have tools that allows us to make the incomprehensible comprehensible with one click and most most of the time for free think about something that is called IM translator or I am translator it's a simple Google um you know it's it's a simple Google extension you can install your

computer with one click your um I have a a video by the way if you write I am translator lcao you will see the demonstration also Chinese and other languages you can create a um content that you know bilingual transcript out of a monolingual transcript so picture this you go on YouTube and you find um a video that has subtitles right now with language TR translator which is the other the other uh Google extension you can create a double you know double strip subtitles with any Wikipedia article or anything on the internet you can create

a bilingual text and this all and and uh if you go and I also have a video on language reactor if you take a look at it you can create bilingual scripts when you have a script you have a possibility of understanding the incomprehensible becomes the comprehensible and this is a very important thing especially nowadays because language learning the rules and the ma the mechanics and dynamics of language learning haven't changed the human being has been like this for I don't know how many years thousands of years but what has changed is the tools that

we can use in order to alarn especially at this stage because at the beginner stage a course book okay give they give you you know two dialogue in your taret language and dialog in your native language but when you now have the possibility of transforming any piece of content from something incomprehensible to comprehensible that's a game changer for example I'm learning Serbian and I have unfortunately for Serbian a lot of videos do not have subtitles but you can actually now I you know you have tools to create transcriptions to create bilingual transcriptions um and you

know that allows us to stick to the fundamental rule of language learning at the stage for me which is get exposed to comprehensible Rich uh and compelling content and uh a boom then the rest is history uh Luca I can't wait to send you some of the jokes that we get in Serbian and the memes you're gonna really enjoy them there are a couple of questions to do with sort of learning and obviously the input thing is what we're talking about mostly now now how about things like to do with grammar conjugations like in Italian

or Spanish or French where the conjugations are many and crazy and if you read lot youd have to read an awful lot or watch a lot of stuff to see all the different conjugations how do you go about doing that is that also done in the natural way like you're talking about or do you go to grammar books or other ways to to practice patterns of languages we're opening a can of warm I could talk about this for hours I'll try to limit myself to I would say I'm neither someone who says okay just to

get massive exposure and then the more you see these verbs the more you're going to learn and and I'm not either for uh deliberate massive grammar study which I think in backfire so I'm something in the middle I would I use the 8020 rule which is in fashion these days meaning that I get massive exposure 80% of the time by doing what I was telling you before uh and actually 10% of the time I can if I I don't do this often but I do sometimes especially at the beginning I tend to uh use grammar

notes very quickly on the Internet or even tests on on the internet in order to bring for some grammar patterns that are difficult to absorb so uh I believe that massive exposure is key but it's not enough especially this is especially true when the language is very different so when when the the language is distant I call it I I I think in terms of distance when the language is very distant from your own native language target language and native language then you might have some deliberate grammar study I'm not a um a grammar buff

I I I like learning grammar but I do it maybe for the first three four months uh when I use a course books like aim I resort to notes grammar notes that are really great because they're they're short I just read them but I would not recommend wasting time on repeating on spending time on on uh tables uh grammar tables I I think this especially at the beginning backfires uh I prefer just getting massive U exposure with some grammar notes that explain the Obscure points when it comes to the uh intermediate stage uh massive exposure

5% or 10% of your time maybe five minutes if your learning session is 1 hour you can dedicate it to reading some grammar notes without memorizing anything remember grammar notes are there for you to um are there to help you clear CL ify how does this pattern work but um when you have internalized a grammar pattern you don't think about it in a delate way is just there uh sometimes people complain about the fact that they try to talk and all of a sudden uh grammar patterns that they've learned actually they've learned the rule gets

in the way so because of course you're thinking about the rule but you're not using it um these are processed by different parts of the brain you know one is a declarative memory another one is procedural memory for those who are interested just look it up procedural and declarative memory they process language learning in you know one part processes words and grammar uh you know deliberate instructions and grammar rules the other part is how you actually uh develop a skill and um so the bottom line is 80% or even 90% of the time exposure 10%

if you want to gra get a grammar book you can do it five minutes a day I think it's more than enough if you want there's a question from sadell asking about the deliberate practice and lising and um if you've got any examples of activities that you would use for deliberate practice that you could share so um yeah let's talk about the the radio or a podcast so the so these are two different things let's talk about comprehensible resources and incomprehensible resources uh listening to the radio is not a comprehensible resource per se because you

can't you don't have a transcript you can create a transcript I it depends on your level but if your level is not B2 yet I would not use radio uh to learn if you want to have it in the background that's fine but if you want to engage in deliver practice it's really important to have a transcription and in order to have a transcription um you can have um you know you can use transcription uh programs I'm using right now one I've disc one of my students has developed it's called sanaro s a a n

a are you this is a something that transforms every video or like any audio it creates a transcript and I use it because if you don't have a transcript it's difficult to do deliberate uh deliberate practice or deliberate work on a on a piece of audio so you first have to make the first step before anything before the steps I'm going to lay out is to create to give yourself the possibility of actually seeing the words that you're hearing I'm talking if you have an A2 level or B1 level and remember you have to choose

the resource that is let's say Rich so slightly difficult but not too difficult it contains obviously pieces of of language that you do not uh know and then you have to create a transcript so let's suppose that again you have a YouTube video with subtitles you have created your bilingual script with language reactor or you have a YouTube video that doesn't have subtitles and you've use Sado to create your own transcript that's the ideal situation where you can do deliberate practice and deliberate practice is a series of steps that take you toward you know from

understanding little to understanding everything for example step number one could be remember here if you have the bilingual transcript in both languages uh the first step could be and this is actually what I do with podcasts is you listen to the your target language let's say French uh while reading the the transcript in English uh this allows you to immediately understand it looks like it's difficult to do but you get used to it pretty quickly and it's actually cool this allows you to understand immediately the the content um because you're reading in your own native

language so you're listening to it in French I suppose your native language here for the sake of Simplicity is English and uh and you read it in English the second passage is to read to listen to it and read it at the same time in your target language uh that's another step where and while you do that you can Mark words on the border of the page you can write the meaning of the of the of the words on the border of the page in your own native language then you listen to it again without

any transcript this gives you an idea there's many combinations I do it normally five steps and just L out three but there's many combinations that you can do and if you do that with a bilingual transcript and the the the the piece of content in your the audio in your target language you can run this podcast let's say a 10-minute podcast three four times and in 40 minutes you have completely dissected it very quickly and you might say okay well what about Chinese you can do the same Chinese you have some tools that help you

create the text bilingual with ping the transliteration doesn't matter the language and then with these transcription tools or translation tools you're able to um speed up uh enormously the speed at which you understand um a piece of content and mind you this is only phase one phase one is understanding you know uh it's not memorizing don't expect to memorize anything from this stage this stage is just getting familiar with a piece of content and make sure that you have the tools to speed up the learning process because if you have a a tool I'm sorry

a piece of content that you do not understand you're not going to listen to like the radio and you don't understand half of it or last you're not going to continue if you understand and you understand it fast it gets exciting so on once that that happens if you start taking podcasts of Three Minute Podcast five 10 you dissect them very quickly with all the tools it takes you I don't know two minutes and you want to print them I have you know hundreds and now now they're there I can even uh show you an

example but I have to walk away from this and uh I don't know Richard if I if I can show them maybe you know L you you go for it if you want to show you show of course um wait let me just show you here if I can see it I have so just to give you an idea uh this is the amount of okay killing trees that's true but this is like for Greek so here this is a podcast from Easy Greek podcast and what I do is I just you know this is

simply a podcast the the the script is just in Greek as you can see here and you can see that I just you know Mark some words and expressions let me see if this is I don't know Richard confirm that people can see something or at least a little bit they may or may not it depends some will some won't yeah well anyway it's just that this is a monolingual transcript but you know I I first uh put the bilingual transcript into my iPad with that I can immediately understand I listen to it in in

in Greek while I read it in Italian on my iPad and the second uh thing that I do the second step is I listen to it in Greek while I read it in Greek the fact that I have done step number one allows me to create a story in my mind when you listen to something in your target language you read it in your own native language and you immediately understand it images form in your mind and these images help you remember what happens and you know when you understand the story it helps you it

creates some sort of visual infrastructure that holds words together and then when you reread it in Greek you remember these words it's just amazing what this does so you if you if you create a series of steps you can dissect anything quickly and uh you can do this with podcasts you can do this with videos you can do this with books now so uh I found out this uh Google Lens thing that is super easy to use with Google Lens I scan every book I've been struggling with this damnn book forever which is o or

its this is in Hungarian and I was just I read it into polish no problem I read it in in Russian no problem Hungarian gave me some problems and then when I found out Google Lens I just scan up page takes you five seconds it reads it in my own native language and I read it in in uh I read it directly in uh Hungarian while the the the voice talks in Italian so I immediately understand I and just changed the way I learned things so I'm having a lot of time a lot of a

lot of fun that that sounds like a really interesting uh recommendation have a look at that and see how it works oh yeah you're got to see it like from the moment I I figured out how do because Google Lens was built to help tourists understand things on the street again remember the hammer this is a tool that you can use to learn anything to to take any page of a book or it even copies the text so you can just copy the text you moves it on your computer you can do so many things

with Google Lens just search for Google lens on YouTube and you will see a tutorial on how to use it it's super easy it's just amazing yeah wow excellent excellent recommendation thank you Lu there are there's a comment about the whole intermediate plateau and uh the comment is from Brian would you say that it just becomes harder to recognize your progress rather than your progress is stalled it just becomes harder to recognize your progress rather than your progress St I would say that um um a lot of people focus on on on goals that's that's

fine I was just a little bit obsessed about I making progress language learning is a skill that you develop so it's not that easy to to be able to gauge your progress step by step I would say that instead of focusing on whether you're making progress or not stick to this fundamental rule get exposure to the language to the rich compelling content I was talking before and make sure that you alternate deliberate and simple practice and in across all four areas of language learning and you are going to improve uh I know that this is

might not be the answer you're looking for but I've never whenever I find myself thinking am I making progress actually uh you know I was spending energy that I I could have you know spent uh just making it happen every day if you make it happen every day and again you balance these two modes of learning uh language learning is bound to happen because you're wired to learn foreign languages as an individual to learn as many languages as you want as long as you know how to learn them you know so it's it doesn't matter

yes your your progress tends to you know flatten a little bit uh because it's how you know skills how human uh human beings learn in general but if if you again follow these these strategies you you kind of keep learning all your life because the brain is very plastic Chanel has a question for you about Danish and I wants to know I think is how you're getting along with it and um and what your plans are with Danish know I I see the group of languages that I learn as a group of friends and uh

when you know you get 15 16 very close friends uh with you have to make the decision and say well this for this amount of especially now I'm just going to see these friends going to have these friends and I might go back and seeing some other friends and danish is one of those friends that fall in touch with for a little bit because I'm pursuing now uh three languages actively my closest friends so to speak right now Greek Serbian uh and uh Hungarian and I had you know something's got to give as they say

I might go back to Danish but for now I just put it on I think the last time I I so I just touched Danish was a year ago uh and I will go back to it but for now you you have to make decisions and that's that's the one friend of falling in touch with put it this way priorities Luka that's the thing isn't it you only have so many hours in the day uh one of the questions also we've got and I'm gonna I'm going to take it even though it's a little bit

provocative but here we go um do you think uh this is from an anonymous attendee so here we go being very daring here Luka do you feel people overstate their abilities fake polyglots are potentially damaging to the language learning community do you think that there were people like that and do you think that they are damaging to the community I don't think they're damaging the I I think I um I've made a couple of videos about this I think that it's it's the individual's responsibility to uh learn how to gauge people uh meaning like let's

suppose that you stumble upon a couple of interesting individuals who overstate their abilities saying that they claiming that they speak 30 languages or 40 uh it's their choice to do that it's your choice to believe that but you also it's your responsibility and duty to get educated about this and once you get enough uh you do enough research um it's amazing how quickly you can actually learn to distinguish people who know how to speak languages and people who don't you might well you might retort how do I know if I don't speak these languages um

I think that I think that at the end of the day um you know if you do enough research you're able to uh you're able to tell uh first and the second thing is that damaging in what way uh and you might say well this guy maybe buy this course or is spamming people to buy his course yes but if you buy a course you have 30 days normally that's how it works for example uh 30 days money back guarantee you don't like it you realize you have the responsibility and the duty again take this

course if you don't like it if you don't find it useful then you just return it so I I honestly you know I've never really found these questions to be very useful because there's uh especially in the last two years a surge of people trying to expose polyglots or fake polyglots people want to you know speak languages a bunch of languages like you know for I uh Moses our beloved unfortunately passed away two years ago he was getting a lot of flack for wanting to speak so many languages I found him inspiring every time I

watched a video and when he was just learning you know especially the ones where he was just writing and how many languages you wanted to learn that was inspiring for me you know everybody has a different approach and and again if you find that someone might be a fake polyal don't follow him it's your responsibility to figure out whether that's good for you or not does it matter that is he's impacting other Learners yes it does matter in the grand of things but ultimately you can't do much about it and you can do a lot

for your own sake and understand what you know who are the people you want to follow if you want to improve your language learning Endeavors indeed I I agree with you I think that you you know different people react differently to different things as well so what one person feels put off with um by what other people feel in INSP spired with and by um will differ greatly and they could be exactly the same thing so you get are the same person who inspires and un inspires different people and and so there's room for everything

I think in in life and in society and I think we need to understand that there's a diversity of thought A diversity of every individual that really needs to have some sort of outpat in some way so you know whether your diversity is that you are inspired by somebody who learns phrases and languages and speaks to them on the street and enjoys doing that and you see a positive reaction from the people they speak to then there's nothing inherently wrong with that they've done something positive by learning even if it's only a few phrases you're

already taking positive steps to learn something out of your immediate circle and out of your sphere of knowledge and as soon as you go beyond that any further you go is also positive by the same token if you want to take one language and do a PhD and 18th century French literature you know looking at the the use of clothing and material in that type of literature and go very very deep into it you're very welcome to do that too uh it doesn't one does not negate the other or exclude the other or diminish the

other I agree I I agree 100% Rich also wanted to add that if you think whenever you feel the temptation of wasting time on this matter just think about the time you could invest in uh making yourself um you know helping yourself get a better person um whenever for example I think that um this is this is again we're opening a can of warms here but remember when you find yourself riding yourself right writing nasty comments for those who do there are I'm pretty sure some some of your all most of you are super nice

people but when we find ourselves writing comments or asking questions about this is because we have some sort of maybe insecurity or maybe we're investing this uh energy into things that are actually depriving us of energy um and whenever you feel like for it happens to it's human it happens to all of us that you watch something maybe you get envious of some person or you get angry at them think about it and try to turn them around for example something that happens to me is when I find myself I I see someone on the

Internet is super successful millions of views and whatever doesn't have to be within the the field of language learning and I feel this Pang of Envy I think what is it that I admire of this person so you can turn everything around you can see things in different ways U but I myself I'm relentlessly trying to find ways to look at at you know the silver lining of every single aspect of my life sometimes I fail and I'm only human but I think that being an optimist and developing investing energy in things that actually turn

the wheel so to speak or or move the needle uh it it has has had a huge impact on my life when someone asked me how do you have time to learn 14 15 languages that I don't I don't waste time I try to use every single ounce of time that I have to move the needle or to do something productive not just language learning but in general reading or doing other things because unfortunately um our time is limited you have to learn to use it well and I don't think that asking yourself whether fake

polys contribute or damage the community is one of those things you should invest your time on and energy very nicely sad Lino um so I mean you are inspiring people in the chat um alga wrote a very nice long comment about how much he admires you and would love to be in touch with you as well um and the anonymous attendee has written that you know thank you and for for inspiring them and um also asks what amount of time you spend per day on languages I mean is this obviously it's an an obsession the

word obsessions use which I think is fair for us I think but this this this poor person says that they're they're finding that they're burning out and don't want to slow down but what kind of time is healthy I mean what you do what other people do where are where are you with your thoughts on this type of thing okay first toga cuz I saw the comment I think yeah you you wrote me a message I don't remember was months ago the problem is that I'm a little bit brain scattered sometimes with WhatsApp so I

tend to receive messages and I tend to forget that you can just write again that if I haven't replied it's not because I was ignoring you was just because I received many messages and lately it's been a little bit overwhelming so I try to protect myself from I'd love as much as i' love to talk to everyone sometimes it's difficult to answer but nothing personal is just that I you know I I I simply forgot uh but I I can I remember I remember you I think you also have a YouTube channel uh if I'm

not wrong and I watched a couple of videos very interesting stuff uh now to answer uh Richard's question um well this takes a long time and I'm try to you know I try to to to to reply as quickly as I can I have Integrated Life integrated languages into my life so there's two um I distinguish two systems uh I call them system one and system two system one the languages I know well U let's say that I speak at a level which allows me to enjoy um the language using the language without having to

do deliberate uh learning so watching movies talking to friends Etc B2 uh C1 C2 and I have around eight languages in that realm in that in that fa let's say in that stage uh and then I have languages that I'm actively learning where I haven't reached that level yet maybe we have B1 A2 B1 or less than B2 those are the languages of system 2 that I pursue every single day so on a daily basis let's say that I can give you a precise answer when it comes to the time that I dedicate to S

system two languages so let's say 30 to 45 minutes dedicated to Hungarian 30 to 45 minutes dedicated to Greek and 30 minutes every day dedicated to Serbian on a good day sometimes I can do only two languages sometimes three but it ranges between 1 hour and 3 hours in a good day especially on Saturdays and Sundays when I can do all three languages and I'm EXC excited I can do 1 Hour 1 hour 30 minutes 1 Hour 1 hour 45 so it's 2 three hours this has been recently the last year uh last year I

I was doing just Hungarian and um and Greek But to answer the the the OU part of the question how many hours do I spend language learning in general is that I don't count the hours that I spent when it comes to system one because I just use them so I have created a system in my own apartment where every space is a different language and a different an activity so I associate uh an activity a time and a space with a language Let me Give an example when I uh cook at lunch so between

1 and 1:30 I listen to the news either in French or in Russian um at night I listen to the news in t N24 which is Polish so I already do these at least for remember eating means cooking eating and washing the dishes which is already 20 to 30 minutes so that you know by doing that I consume this this this amount of time in these languages when I read at night I I have three reading sessions one first in the morning one after lunch one in the evening and I I and I read different

books in different languages in the morning for example productivity or business or marketing that's normally in English um in the afternoon philosophy normally in Italian or French and then at night I read either in English or in Polish about astronomy you know astronomy in Polish or history in Russian or English and I read the magazine in the bathroom in German so know that will make youou [Laughter] Richard you know and then when I take a shower if I don't have to walk my hair I use my airod listen sh I thought about it say should

I say this yes because what I do [Laughter] and on his toilet roll he has words written and the oh my gosh okay so just wrap wrap it up this is without without considering the fact that when I go out with friends I have a lot of friends here you know and organize things and we talk in multiple languages I used to live with a French uh guy so there's let's say five six even seven languages that I speak at a high level that I kind of use every day at work I use English Italian

and Spanish all the time so for working reasons for my own like because of my own choices or live choices or bathroom choices I use a number a number of languages every single day for system one and then on top of that I have system two so I have um I have a log book I haven't made this public I have made some of my log books uh public specific ones on the on the blog but not this one this is uh because it's very personal but basically I've been keeping for two years it's called

maintenance log book and I write system one and system two and every day how many languages I learn and the activities and how for how long and the average is around seven six to seven languages on a bad day 10 languages on a good day but it's never been more than 10 languages you know depending on a on a you know like these lucky days where you have for work you have to use 3 four then in your own life you have to use 3 four and then you go out with friends and use three

four and up to 10 but normally what has really facilitated me is integrating um you know languages into my life and doing everything through these languages without even having to think about am I learning this no I'm just using it so that made a huge difference in in my language learning maintenance and you know language development in general I love it we've got more questions unfortunately we can't get to all of the questions uh this time around but Luka I'm sure you'll come back and join us uh now we've had an intimate look into you

your life I saw some of our questions about toilet paper and my favorite language for showering is Polish I I have I use spreaker.com which is an amazing platform for podcast and I I just listened to podcast in in the shower then and just to sort of to to allay any fears we will um get the links and the names of the things that Luc has recommended here and put them in the description of the video when it goes into the Saturn theater uh so look out for it when it's released and you'll get the

links there I'll ask Luka for them afterwards to make sure I've captured them all and um LCA All That Remains for me to say is thank you so much for taking the time to join us today for answering all the questions for sharing probably a little bit too much but also you you've inspired you've inspired us all and um I feel I feel ready to go to the bathroom oh boy oh boy richer you're the man thanks for giving me the opportunity of of sharing my love for my passion for language learning and thank you

for all the interesting questions and uh for being awesome as usual and as always happy language learning keep rocking live and if your future is bright happy Sunday take care Lino CH cha oh [Music] he