The No-Nonsense Guide to Language Learning Page 6
With paid teachers you should be clear about what you are looking to get out of your lesson, and prepare some materials or topics that you want to review.
A bit of preparation before you talk to your teacher will let you focus on your most important areas.
Two Steps to Prepare for Your Skype Language Exchange
Step 1: Decide What to Talk About
Whichever language I’m learning, I usually prepare for my Skype speaking practice in the same way. I always start with phrases and words that are specific and relevant to my interests, and I make a list of words that are related to me and my life, so I can refer to it when talking about myself. If you’ve gone through my free Speak in a Week course, then you’ll already be quite familiar with this step.
Make sure that you have practised your phrases several times, and know how they should sound. Listening to the words beforehand on forvo.com is really helpful for this.
Another handy group of phrases to have ready are “survival phrases” - those that will help you with language learning during your lesson. For example “Can you please repeat that more slowly?” or “Can you write it down for me?” These will become invaluable during your first conversations in the language.
Just knowing a few phrases you want to say in advance will take you really far.
Step 2: Tackle Your Nerves
Feeling nervous? So is the other person!
One of the biggest reasons I hear that people don’t take the plunge to practise on Skype is nerves!
I’m always hearing, “Benny, I’m shy!” or “Benny, I’m scared!” Well, I can’t change that, but I can tell you that your exchange partner is likely just as nervous as you are.
The person on the screen won’t be scrutinizing your language skills the way you imagine they will be. They won’t be judging you. They won’t be annoyed with your mistakes or slow speech. They’ll probably be too busy worrying that you will judge them, that you will be annoyed with them. They’ll be focusing on their own mistakes, not yours!
A lot of people get nervous the first time they speak with a native speaker. You’ll probably never feel totally “ready” to start speaking with another person. This is completely normal.
In fact, if you feel “ready” to speak with a native speaker, then you’ve probably waited too long! Feeling a bit terrified during your first conversation is to be expected and, while I can’t give you a magic pill to take away the nerves, I can tell you that this is absolutely temporary.
Once your first conversation is over, it will only get easier. In fact, it will start to get easier in the first two minutes of your conversation! Just hang in there and soon enough you’ll start to get into the flow of things.
How to Set Up Your Computer for a Skype Language Exchange
When I have a speaking session on Skype, I make sure that my computer desktop is set up in an optimal way. There are a few different windows you should have open on your computer while you’re chatting with a native speaker:
Your list of phrases and keywords in a notepad document
An online dictionary like wordreference.com to find words in your target language
An automatic translator, like Google Translate, for when you get really stuck
If you have these open in tabs in your browser, or in easily accessible windows, all of the information you’ll need during the conversation is at your fingertips and easily accessible. This allows you to focus on practising speaking, rather than scrambling to look things up. Google Translate is far from perfect, but it’s a handy crutch to lean on when you’re an absolute beginner.
This might seem like “cheating”, since you have the things you want to practise right in front of you. But this is about getting used to speaking in the language. And the fastest way to become comfortable speaking and gain confidence in your ability is to open your mouth.
In time, you’ll be able to speak without those “cheat sheets” on your computer screen. In fact, using this sort of system, you’ll find yourself progressing to new phrases and words much faster than if you were always trying to reproduce them from memory.
Five Tips to Make the Most of Your Skype Language Exchange
Here are a few other tips that can help make your Skype call much more effective:
Tip 1: Open Your Mouth!
The best way to make the most of your Skype language practice is to open your mouth and speak! Enjoy getting to know someone from the other side of the planet.
It’s amazing when you think about how technology brings this world closer together. Thanks to this incredible software called Skype, you no longer need to travel thousands of miles to converse with a native speaker!
Tip 2: Use Video, Not Just Voice
To make sure your Skype call is as effective as possible, try to have a video call.
“Can’t I just have a voice call?” you might ask, and sure, while that is technically possible, I highly recommend you arrange a video call with your native speaker.
Over 90% of communication (especially in conveying emotions) is nonverbal, so body language can play a big part in getting your point across, or understanding what the other person is saying, or being able to gesture when needed.
Seeing the person also gets you used to observing cultural cues that people use when speaking in that language. How someone uses their hands or shows emotion on their face can vary from culture to culture. Seeing it first hand will give you insight into the cultural nuances of how people communicate.
Tip 3: Try the Bingo! Strategy
Another way to make the most of your call is use the “Bingo” strategy, which my partner Lauren came up with. Essentially, Lauren writes down a list of possible things to say, and plays a bingo game with herself during the call to try and practise all the phrases on the list. Each time she says a phrase, it gets crossed off the list. If she crosses off all of them, it’s Bingo!.
Tip 4: Use Technology to Your Advantage
Try recording your Skype conversation to review later on. (To do this, always get permission first from your teacher, and don’t share the video unless you get permission for that, too.) This is easier to do if you are just saving the audio, since free software like Audacity can handle that in the background for you.
If you record your session, you’ll be able to look back and figure out that word you didn’t understand, or watch again to remember all the words you wanted to say but didn’t know how. This way, you’ll be better prepared for next time.
You can also ask your teacher to incorporate Google Doc documentation, screen sharing, or other technologies into your lessons, as I outlined in the chapter 8.
Tip 5: Review Your Notes After the Call
Lastly, don’t close your computer the moment your Skype call ends.
Instead, spend an extra ten minutes looking back at the notes in the Skype chat box. What words did your teacher type out that you didn’t know? What new phrases should you add to your study list or Anki deck? Were there any conversation topics that you struggled with?
This “debriefing” time is so important to make sure that everything you just learned doesn’t get lost, but gets reincorporated into your study strategy.
Still not convinced that you need to chat with native speakers? I’m not done with you yet! Let’s explore, using a real-world example from one of my most “controversial” language missions, Mandarin Chinese, why stepping outside your comfort zone is so important in language learning.
Chapter 10: The Only Way to Get Far Quickly is to Get Out of Your Comfort Zone
One problem with seeing the end-result of any feat, is not understanding the processes that went on to get to that point. As my friend Khatzumoto said to me once:
“Olympic coverage really ticks me off… you can’t just go up to a person on game day and say how talented they are. So I came up with this rule, that in order to earn the right to watch the Olympics you should have to watch all of their training too!”
This issue of ign
oring the work that person had to go through to get to the point you see him is a huge problem in language learning. It’s easy to see someone speak a foreign language and dismiss that person as a “genius”, or say that it just comes naturally to them. As if it was their destiny, or a universe-conspired explosion of luck. This is discouraging as each of us thinks about how much we have to struggle, and study and fail because we don’t have natural talent.
While I will always strive to learn as quickly as I can, the fact of the matter is that I can’t, and no other learner can, skip the frustration involved and required to reach a useful level in a foreign language. When people first come across my blog articles or videos, they sometimes have the false presumption that I perhaps claim to go to the country, instantly make dozens of friends and party all the time in glamorous James-Bond style and magically speak the language at the end; it’s just not fair, so it can’t be true. Learning a language takes hard work, and since spending “only” 3 months on it isn’t hard work, I must be lying.
But here’s the thing. Three months is a really long time. It’s not about counting the months, but counting the hours and the quality of those hours that makes the difference. A lot of my time, especially initially, is spent quite a bit outside of my comfort zone, and actually being tremendously frustrated. This is something that very few learners do much, even if they spend “lots of time” studying.
The only way to get anywhere meaningful is through hard work
And I’ll let you in on a little secret that those who think I party my way to fluency don’t know: I pour blood, sweat, tears and a crapload of sacrifices into my language learning. More than the vast majority of those who have been “learning the language for years” can ever imagine. It’s about priorities and insane devotion to the task, not simply “working hard”. This is something that anyone else can do, but sadly most don’t.
One reason it will indeed take you years to learn a language is if you make sure you are comfortable the entire time. Stay indoors with software that mostly requires that you just click a few buttons, sit down with a book or go for a pleasant jog with a podcast on, go to a class and let the teacher do all the talking, or do exercises only at the level assigned to you. Even if you are pouring everything into studying hard, is that really trying as hard as you can? Working hard is not the same as living hard.
This isn’t good enough. The real world presents you with problems and learning opportunities before you are ready. The more you are exposed to them, the faster you’ll be forced to learn.
To illustrate this, let me share a typical day from when I was learning Mandarin, deeply immersed in the middle of my project.
My own long road through the shortcut: a typical day
Most expats: Get up, work, study some vocab in the break, after work get the weekly one hour private lesson, and speak in English the entire time, go home and study for an hour, then go out with your English speaking mates for the rest of the night, complaining about how hard Chinese is… in English. Satisfied that two or three entire hours of “hard” work mean he’s done his part on the “long road” to speak the language some day.
Me: Wake up to a radio in Mandarin telling me the news and desperately force myself to pick out as many words as I can, and wish I knew what was going on in the world after I understand only fragmented basic words. Start off grumpy.
Go somewhere completely different for breakfast today to force myself to get out of the lazy routine I was getting into, since my favourite place already knows what I want and I just confirm it with two or three of the same words. It’s possible I’ll order the wrong thing because of this. Order in broken Mandarin, with no more pointing and just saying “that” and consider it a success if I get what I wanted. Starting the day off with the wrong breakfast is damn annoying, but you can bet I won’t make the mistake again next time.
I really could have done with that filling hot egg and spinach muffin they have at my usual place across the road… but deal with the fact that a breakfast is a breakfast. At least I ordered it in a way that forced me to practise beyond repeating the same words I already know.
Study for several hours, then after doing work for several hours after that (yes, I have to work too!) get out of the books and out of the house to do the important spoken project of that day (e.g. explain my way into having my cell phone repaired, go get a quick tea somewhere and force myself to ask a non-tea related question of the waitress, ask directions to something that I know the answer to so I can get used to expected vocab, record a video in Mandarin for YouTube – anything that forces me to speak the language). Every experience is like pulling teeth as I am way out of my comfort zone, but each time I learn something important and remember the minor victories.
Then it’s time for the gym! But treadmills and dumbbells are boring. Instead I go to dance lessons included in my membership. An entire hour of instructions being shouted at me and others… in Mandarin of course. Trying to divide my attention between mimicking the instructor’s body movements precisely, and trying to figure out if I can contextually figure out what he’s saying and learn some new words. End the hour exhausted physically and mentally.
Go to a crowded café with lots of people speaking and try to study there until they close. Studying is the easy part. Sitting in a comfy chair with nice music and nobody pressuring me or waiting for me to say what I want to say… I could do this all day! Which is exactly why I shouldn’t…
An expat walks in with his local girlfriend, speaking in English, and is soon joined by several expat friends. I sigh about the fact that I still don’t know anyone in the city yet (I’m certainly not too shy to make new friends, just not able to do it effectively in the local language yet and not interested in the slippery slope of hanging out “just a little” with English speaking expats), and put my earphones on with the radio (some easy listening station, since love songs have much easier to distinguish slower lyrics) as I continue to study. My time to shine and really get into the meat of the part of language learning I love most will come in a few short weeks. All this studying is based on the issues I actually have with speaking, not on blindly going through courses.
Come home, and try to communicate with my terribly broken Chinese in an online chatroom. Succeed in convincing someone to meet up with me next week! Then realise how incredibly unprepared I am to sit down with someone and talk for more than 5 seconds in Mandarin. Anyway, I’ll figure that out when the time comes…
Then finally it’s time to “reward” myself with two hours of non-work-related English to end my day, but I keep it entirely online to make sure I actually speak as little as possible or no English at all in that day. Seeing the outside world again actually makes me miss home, and someone following my YouTube channel leaves a discouraging comment on one of my Mandarin videos I uploaded for some accountability. Rather than relaxing, this just makes me more tense.
Then I remember that there is a big X at the top right of the window and I can turn them off… and I go to bed to start the process all over again the next day.
Totally worth it!
OK, this incredibly intensive learning day early in my project may sound horrible, but because I kept up this work over three months, I got rewarded with a new language that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Even though I didn’t reach fluency in those initial three months, I did get to a “conversational” level (B1, or lower intermediate at a spoken level in Mandarin, confirmed independently by a Mandarin school in Beijing), which was enough to be able to converse with Chinese people on a pretty decent range of topics if they were willing to speak to me slowly. That was an achievement I was very proud of.
And the best part? After the intensive learning period, I stopped studying, hit the road and went on an incredible adventure spanning thousands of kilometres through mainland China. I met and genuinely talked with a Kung Fu master, a Buddhist monk, I made friends on my train journeys, and I got to see a side of China that mo
st westerners could never dream of seeing, all thanks to doing it through Mandarin. If you don’t believe me, it’s all on my YouTube channel!
Everyone struggles, but some struggle more efficiently
It’s not fun to be stuck in that lower level stage of learning, and the whole point of it is that if you want to stick to your guns and be 100% devoted, you can’t start sharing your frustrations with anyone in person yet, because you don’t even know the word for “frustration”. But I know from experience how much all this hard work can pay off in terms of friendships and exposure to sides of a culture many passers-through never get to see.
In the first video I recorded of myself speaking Mandarin at the start of my project, you can see in my face how much I’m trying to think to force basic words out of me (or in this case… ba…sic….syll…a…bles), and may appreciate that maybe there is no quantum leap of merrily skipping through frustration for anyone.
Everyone struggles, and even those of us who learn languages full time will have experiences like my Mandarin one.
I feel like the myth that you are “smart” if you learn languages, makes too many people unwilling to accept that they will not be able to argue politics and deeply share their feelings if they dared to speak in their first weeks, before they are “ready”. Any idiot can learn a language, and knowing this means that I can accept that perhaps I have to be that idiot.
You feel really stupid when you try to use a language in situations that are outside of your comfort zone, and that’s precisely why you need MORE of these situations, not less of them.
If you charge into the frustration, embrace it, and fill up all your free time with it, then you WILL get to the other side much quicker. You “get it out of your system”, rather than letting it linger. Too many learners only do these annoying practice things, once in awhile, and it’s what slows them down tremendously. Doing it the hard and intensive way is damn stressful, and I can confirm that. I’m not interested in the easiest way to learn a language, I want the most efficient way.