When Learning a Language DON'T Study the 'Basics'

CC subtitles available in multiple languages.

Some people say we need to “focus on the basics” when learning a language. However, we acquire various aspects of a language naturally, in an order that we don’t control. It is futile to try to master the basics, some of which will elude us for a long time.

0:00 I have never been able to "master the basics" in a new language.
1:02 The Natural Order of Language Acquisition.
3:32 What to focus on instead of perfecting the basics.
7:01 The importance of de-emphasizing learning the "basics".

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#languagelearning #languages #polyglot

[LOL-cringe]

"Focus on enjoying the language." This really is the best advice. Thank you!

[ThatNiceDutchGuy]

Simple extra tip: Do not hold back because you are afraid of making some mistakes. You will get better because you train.

[Mamika_AFK]

Very true what u say about learning a language naturally! I'm a Spanish native speaker, and I learned English without studying, by just chatting on internet, watching movies and games, etc.

Thank you very much for letting me know it's ok to make mistakes. Now my goal is to fully learn Japanese, and I will be doing the same, mixed with studying the alphabet and Kanji 😄

[storyteller]

This is one of Steve's best videos yet. At age 48 I moved to Germany from the UK and had to start again with the language that I had learned in school. Although some 'basics' of grammar were still there deeply buried in my brain, I had to refresh everything and certainly build up vocabulary like a beginner. And here's the thing, although I would now and again look in a grammar book to check something I did not try to memorise 'rules' or lists. Instead I did loads of reading and spent hundreds of hours listening to native speakers and analysed use of grammar in context to understand how the language works.
When it came to vocabulary learning I remember the metaphor of a 'radar' that was often in my mind. At the start all words in the target language are foreign and unknown. Millions of words are flying around in that language every day, both spoken and written. Then your brain notices a particular word or phrase flying across the mind's 'radar' regularly and it begins to pay attention to that word or phrase. For example, every day I would hear Germans say "Sag mir Bescheid". I never learned that phrase in school. What does that mean? Ah, "tell me" or "let me know" in my native language. It took me another two years before I could use it with confidence myself. Now I don't even think about it.

Sixteen years later at age 64 I can stand on a stage in Germany as a professional storyteller and entertain a German audience in their own language. Every time I open my mouth I still make small mistakes. It doesn't matter!

Now I am learning Ukrainian and challenging myself to learn the story of Little Red Riding Hood so I can tell it to native speaker refugees here.

Keep practicing. Übung macht den Meister!

[andrewgray]

As a professional language teacher and language learning hobbyist (and enthusiastic Lingq user!), I couldn't agree more with this. Some very important conclusions for language teaching follow upon this attitude regarding "the basics." Over the years I've seen many teachers get exasperated when their intermediate or advanced students slip up with basic vocabulary and sentence structures, and these teachers feel that they have to revert back to lessons on "the basics" that their students then find irritating and de-motivating. I always tell new teachers to avoid this. I also tell my students not to stress out over these slips. As Steve explains here, with increasingly rich input (and I would add increasing production based on that input), "the basics" eventually fall into place. You just have to keep moving with the motivating n+1 content. If teachers and students everywhere got this message, more people would be motivated to learn languages.

[DoYouSpeakGreek]

"Focus on enjoying the language" : only when i did that i saw real improvement! Thank you, Steve❤

[lenoncerqueira]

I'm Brazilian, and thus Portuguese is my native language. I learned English when I was very young, through immersion in vast English material - music, games, movies, text, etc. I don't remember studying a book or memorizing rules. Before I even knew it, I could come up with phrases which simply made total sense, grammatically, with the patterns I had been picking up on. Since then, I see immersion as the only effective way to learn a new language, one does not have to brute force one's way into a language.

[malafakka]

Back in school, my average grade in English was a C. Later, it became an A-, but not because I had put any conscious effort into improving my English, but because I had begun to read books and comics in English. I only used a dictionary when it was necessary. Like you said, you will learn the most common words automatically if you immerse yourself in the language. I think I did pretty well without ever having been to an English speaking country.

[JoaoVitor-bwoi]

1 year before I saw you with Gabriel Polyglot. I always thought that learning a foreign language would be impossible for an ordinary person. And today, I can watch this video and understand what you're saying. Thank you.

[ahoj]

Its true. No matter how fluent we are, we still make the basic mistakes. So we shouldn’t worry about it so much

[aquamarina]

Thank you for this. I've been failing in basics of english since I was a child, and everytime I failed my thoughts were always the same "You're supposed to know this already, why are you still failing at it?" but now I'm trying to forget about that and enjoy the language, not suffer with it.

[michaelhargrove]

I find studying the basics (I.e., grammar) helps in somewhat unexpected ways. First it helps accelerate my noticing and understanding certain patterns. Often I find native speech “in the wild” has so much going on that I’m too overwhelmed to notice patterns. I also find that if I’m really struggling with a particular grammar concept, I realize I’m just not ready for it yet—try again later. Second it gives me confidence to speak a little earlier especially with common patterns (e.g., what to do with modal and main verbs, how to conjugate a particular tense, where do modifiers belong) . There comes a point where certain things just sound right, but studying a little grammar allows me to start playing with the pattern in my output earlier than I probably would otherwise. I’m guessing I need 70-80% input, and 20-30% “studying the basics.”

[philipb]

Different people might have different learning styles. I find it easier to learn grammar as well as I can, and add vocabulary as I go along. I found it immensely frustrating that my Japanese teachers not only seldom would teach the grammar - at times they did not even know it. For learning the kanji characters: they never told us that there were basic components which would recur over a wide range of kanji. Instead, we were instructed to learn the stroke order, though it is easier just to recognize and assemble known components. If you know the common components, you at least have a chance at guessing the meaning of an unknown character.

[jorgerivas]

I grew up bilingual, English and Spanish. I learned conversational French and Dutch one year when I was in Europe. Months ago I started learning New Testament Greek. I couldn't agree more about not learning basics. There are so many words and phrases that repeat themselves throughout the Bible and I've learned to easily recognize them as I study every morning, knowing little about conjugation, grammar, etc. Learning it this way makes it much more fun.

[x_covil]

Valid points - I noticed this myself recently when I started learning Japanese. I kept repeating the first two units in my study book over and over, and at some point it felt like I was stuck. I was so focused on memorizing the “basics“, that I forgot about making any progress. After becoming aware of that fact, I remembered how I actually learned/studied English back in the days, and I noticed that back then I was actually indirectly pushing myself to make progress by reading and listening to things I didn‘t fully understand yet, but I always looked it up afterwards. The more I read and listened, the more easy stuff like grammar and vocabulary became, and at some point, I’d say, it became like second nature.

[tomaaron]

Great analysis. I spent 6 years ( including 3 years in university) to become decent in German. In contrast, about 18 months to acquire the same level in Russian. Russian I ‘‘studied’ for for 2 weeks to get oriented and then watched YouTube videos of pre school stories, kids cartoons, then read teen books, read books, set my Facebook, etc settings to Russian. An hour and a half or so a day but it wasn’t ‘work’ but just part of day to day living. Proper grammar, verb tenses is more of a breeze ‘after’ exposure to thr language and, to be honest, even then have no ‘need’ to be that proficient in writing Russian…it ‘comes together’ using language caps whrn I post on Russian language forums.

[azariacba]

The last sentence of the video really hit the nail on the head: "Don't focus on the basics; focus on enjoying the language". The late great laoshu505000 did just that; he focused on memorizing phrases at first and would then study grammar later. I've done the same with Hebrew, and it's really helped me not get bogged down with the grammatical complexities of the language. I find that tackling difficult grammatical concepts isn't such a slog if you already have a bunch of words and phrases under your belt, derived from courses and/or natural input like movies/books/music in the language. Public school Spanish classes really killed the language by beating us over the head with too much explicit grammatical instruction.

[ambition]

My key takeaway via Tammy AI

0:44: 🗣 Don't focus on learning the basics of a language, instead focus on listening, reading, and acquiring vocabulary naturally.
4:11: 🗣 Acquiring language is not like building a house with a set foundation, but rather a gradual process of developing habits and familiarity with the language.
7:25: 🗣 Focus on enjoying the language and slowly improving instead of feeling guilty about making basic mistakes.

[RobWhittlestone]

Nice to hear this. I am currently learning my 5th language, Greek, at age 67.
I learnt French in school over 5 years then lived in Belgium and France for a total of 5 years. My first wife was also French which helped and so my French became pretty good.
I moved to northern Switzerland where I went to night school for a semester to learn German and learned absolute basics but a) I was hearing Swiss German dialect during the daytime in my job and b) learned the rest of my German at work or in the street and later with my wife. Now after 30 years it's not bad.
I went to night school for 2 or 3 semesters to learn Italian so I could talk with my father-in-law a) but they explained the grammar in terms of German so that didn't help me much. However because of my strong French I could fill in many gaps and understand and speak well enough for my needs.
I am now learning modern Greek in German and the grammar explanations relate to German grammar which I still really don't know well, so it's uphill work. But although I don't know the basics very well, I feel they will fall into place as soon as I can understand more and speak more. So I'm not too worried - because at my age I know that people will probably understand what I want to say, even if it's not correct. The best way would probably to get a live-in Greek girlfriend but I don't think my wife would be too keen! 🙂
*Bottom line: I agree with Steve - get familiar with some basics but move on. They'll fall into place when you get more practice and experience listening and speaking*
All the best, Rob in Switzerland

[ctnt]

Great video. Learning a language is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, rather than constructing a building. With a building, the order is extremely important, whereas with a puzzle the whole thing is worked at the same time. Some areas are easier and some are harder. Tackling the easier areas first makes sense, and makes the harder areas more manageable... but it would be absurd to say that you *ought* to complete a given area before moving on to the next.