Last summer when I was alone in
Tallin Estonia, I had to face a challenge
this challenge was the simple phrase and
many others like it "Tere tulemast"
I presume none of you speak Estonian
I take that as a no so and I was in the
same situation as you are right now
back in the last summer, because I never
spoke Estonian, never read Estonian book
never watch an Estonian movie,
never actually seen Estonian song or met
anybody from Estonian
I had to act quickly, I had to be able to
day one single spot, be able to
understand what the barista was saying
when I was ordering my coffe,
be able to understand what the passport
security person was asking me at
the airport, when I was coming to Estonia
I was living Tallin, I had to be able
to comprehend the language, to comprehend
it at that very single moment, and this
experience reised the question.
How can one learn a language in a very
limited amount of time, comprehend it,
be able to act with it, be able to work
with it , to meet people with it
and most of all progress in it.
I attended to talk last september which
was right above this issue
it was held by a polyglot, she was from
Slovakia and was willing to talk about
how he/she is learning, how she was
learning and is still learning to this
day new languages, she told us of people
that spek six, ten, twelve, sixteen
languages even they devote their whole
lives to this idea of being able to
comprehend every single one of them,
or as many as they could, and if you were
thinking that there is a magical way,
some magical secret which she told me,
I have to disappoint you there is no
single super method.
The polyglots all of them worldwide agree
one thing there is no way one fastest way
how to learn a language, it has
to be personal, you have to be able
to choose a personal way and find it,
and find your language through
a personal personal way and modify it
as much ass you possibly can to suit you
to suit your type of learning.
Some people prefer stuck thier head for
vocabulary and to fill it with words and
phrases until they head bursts
some of us prefer to watch a movie
to talk with a person in a pub
or like me when going back from the
librer working in a essay for six hours
till dying morning meet a drunken
Frenchman and talk to him in play French
and practice as much as I can.
There are many ways, some people even
prefer those video games that you know
your phone's you know the memorizes and
those kind of things
I'm not much fan of that
but that's a personal thing again
today what I'll be presenting to you is
something differente, it is or these are
four points which are intrinsic to our
learning, which are building blocks of any
learning of any language you will ever do
doesn't matter if it's a Chinese,
if it's Arabic if it's Hebrew, Estonian,
French, Spanish, any language will so ever
these four things: message, importance,
observation, comprehension all amount of
the same thing the same goal learning
a language effectively and they all are as
you'll soon find interconnected.
You can not just focus on one of them,
you can not just focus on importance
and hope that you will through
this relevance to who you are
you´ll be to able to learn quickly
or similarly you can not just focus
on comprehension as we do in our
schools nowadays, we focus too much
on memorizing vocabulary
or learning phrases about whatever thing
that there prescribed by the booklets,
but that´s not how you learn a language.
I´ll get into them more later once the
progress through the talk.
The first one is message
some of you this might seem a bit bizarre,
but would I be my message, it is well
you´ll see yourselves.
This sentence in in Stonian
since you know we speak Stonian
I´m not going to be asking what actually
means but does anybody or rather
let me read it, I´m not fluent Stonian so
just like be ready with me so.
Speaking Stonian
Now still you have no clue what this
actually means, I don´t presume that from
some magical learning of
some broken Stonian magically speak or
learn, understand this one phrase but
already you can see that there is
yah twice and because language is
logically structured, you are able
to deduce that, probably because also
these two works are the same endings
this one, and this one and then
these two then maybe that means end and
already in less than 30 secconds you
understand one word in languages
you´ve never seen in your whole life,
and through progressing like this,
through making these small steps you´re
able to actually learn it.
What if I put another sentence here
in a language of some of you speak,
maybe more that some of you,
maybe all of you.
But certain that is more familiar,
because we are anglephone,
francophone society,
so most of us presumably and,
what if I put another, one which
all of us speak, in English.
This is how you learn a language,
once you find the meaning, the message
behind a sentence you´re able to acquire
the language, there are signifers
in a language, which all help you to build
a logical structure of this set language.
When you understand the message,
you unconsciously acquire language,
this doesn´t mean that by understand one
phrase from the charter of human rights
from the United Nations you understand
Stonian or French or English
for that matter.
It simply means that you will have
the bulding blocks with which you
can build the learning,
you have this, the logical structure which
build on this language.
Then you have importance,
every language, no matter what it is
has to be useful to you,
has to be relevant to you,
has to be something you enjoy.
When I was in school many years ago,
in my elementary school I was forced to
study Spanish, I hate it,
I couldn´t stand it.
Nothing against Spanish,
nothing against that
It was just simply didn´t enjoy it
I could´t learn a single sentence.
When I was in Italy for my .....
Edinburgh residential trip, I decided
to study Italian and I was like yes,
I´m gonna learn this language and I failed
because I was not able to enjoy it,
because I just didn´t enjoy,
and actually from the one trip,
I had more from Swedish,
because I met a Swedish friend that
I´m still in talk in contact to this day.
It is this enjoyment is relevance to you
that is important.
It has to be relevant to ours education,
something that you want to learn
because you want to progress in your life.
Has to be relevant because of your family,
your friends, if you find enjoyment in it.
It has to be relevant because of your job
maybe you have a job in I don´t know
Ireland or Stockholm and you need to learn
the language to be able to work with it,
and like me maybe it´s through
the travels because being international,
this what this whole day is about,
means that you want to open yourself
to other opportunities.
For me that means to see different
cultures in different worlds and as a part
of that, you have to be able to speed
the language at least some degree.
Languages are tools just like
any other part of our lives,
they can be used in some meaningful way
once you find this what this
meaningful way is you´re to able
to learn much faster and therefore
chooses languages useful to you.
Now on to observation and this is probably
the part that I think might be one the
most important simply because
it can be so easily.
This photo was taken when I was also
last summer walking to the Mont Blank
in between France, Italy and Switzerland
and when I took it I was jus crossing
the Italian-French border
I juts came from a little refugee on the
French side, and was walking up the
mountain to cross the Italian side and
in the same day I spoke French and Italian
My French is by no means good but I´m able
to talked with it, Italian is much harder,
but still I was to able to comprehend
the people ask for a bed and a
dire situation not be forced
to sleep outside and wind and
freezing cold because they´ll be not
being enjoyable at all.
And from it I realized that there are
two key things, that you have
to be actually immerse yourself in
a language to some degree,
you cannot just stand set at home
and hope the language will come to you
that the knowledge that you are able
to do with will actually come to you
some like that, you have to be actually
able to put yourself there
to pay attention to observe
how people are doing, how they speak,
how they emote and hopefully from that
build up your knowledge and this is
actually a key thing
and I think people should start doing this
you should be look for something called:
parent speaker
Now this is what I learned during the talk
about the polyglots back in september,
it is an idea that when you´re
speaking a new language
you´re like a baby,
you have don´t know how to
actually operate language,
you´re just put in a world we´re
all adults speaking in a foreign language
and you´re hoping to crack grab grasp
a meaning about it, grasp something that
you can´t know it´s a world that
you can´t understand,
what you need is a parent speaker,
somebody that will speak to you in
the same level, will help you learn
new words and will actually correct you,
will actually give you advice
how to speak better and will now
diminish you in any sort of way.
That is key because when you´re able
to practice you speaking you´re learning
in that sense that you learn faster
because and this is actually gonna be the
very next slide I think afterwards so
I´m gonna quickly get this sorry for that.
When you actually learn a language through
comprehension, through observation
you are able to then speak the language,
and this is one of the most
important things
because how else would you
communicate with people especially
when you want travel, you need to be able
to act on your knowledge .
You have to be able to actually
find somebody that you can talk
to an equal sense
and you have to be able to listen a lot.
People don't want to listen
they revert back to English
they revert back to to their natural tongue
because they are scared
don't be scared
this gonna sound like a great cliche
don't be scared to make mistakes,
make them.
They're gonna be corrected by people
and you gonna learn from that.
And now the other thing that
I was hoping to talk about
Comprehension.
And this thing can be slipt into two parts
memory and comprehension or knowledge
And I feel like nowadays in schools
what we do is we just stuff our heads
with vocabulary until they explote
we shouldn't be do that because
memory or knowledge is in comprehension
like for example I know one sentence in
Irish
speaking Irish
does it mean I speak Irish by no means
I don't even properly know what the
sentence means but I know that it's Irish
I have that one piece of knowledge but
I couldn't say I comprehend the language
by no means whatsoever and
that's the issue
we force ourselves to learn
complex vocabulary that is nor
relevant to us.
We force to stuff our heads with words
that don't be are any meaning and that
will never probably use ever in our lives
we don't actually focus on
comprehending them
comprehending the structure
and the sentences to actually using our
existing knowledge from other languages
from my maternal tongues
to actually progress further.
We should be doing that
we should be trying to learn
with use of our existing languages
we should be using a native tongues
we should be using our abilities to speak
from they one
we should be looking at actions more than
words or nouns .
When you learn what it means the word
to hurt it's still more useful than
actually what it means what the word
arm is it
You can be like hurt but what do we do
with it an arm it doesn't work like that.
Actions are more important than words
and this sort of progress is somenthing
that's key for learning a
language effectively.
So I presented to you today is
four principles and some key points
some things that maybe you've heard
some things that you that maybe
we're new to you
the parent speaker probably .
All these things are essential
you can remove one and hope that
the others will come with it
or that you focus only on one of them
and completely disregard the others
it is important to push yourselfs
to your limits
to go out there and this is gonna sound
like a great cliche once again but
to push yourself go out there
and actually experience the language
firsthand.
No school, no institution no book can ever
give you that
and just only very end I would like to
dispel one last thing that I've been told
in past that I've heard people tell me
or people tell other people,
that it's talent that's required that
for being able to learn languages
you need talent you need to be able
to have this magical skill with things
that you're born with, it's no true
anyone can learn language
anyone I've known when they push
themselves hard enough
they're able to speak a language
some people are far superior to me
and ther are probably hundreds and
millions alike that.
But it is that thing that you push
yourselves that differentiates you
from other people
this push.
So don't be scared to push.
Thank you.