Studying Words is Ruining Your Language Learning

Learning a language is about more than remembering a list of isolated words. Here we look at how we can approach it in a different way.

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[brassbandit]

Most underappreciated language learning channel 100%

[pythonwolf]

be patient please, i see a great potential for this channel, it just takes time, great content as usual 🔥💯☕

[joniking]

The problem for me is that in theory it is a nice idea to get to a certain level by comprehensive input - the problem is that some vocabulary just has to be learned by heart because the words do not appear so often in books and serials I'm interested in, neither are they part of my daily life (currently in Poland), for example kitchen utensil, administration stuff....

[philipdavis]

Good advice with writing mandarin characters - when I started with Japanese I developed a lunchtime habit of doing Duolingo (yeah, I know, I know), but then writing out each answer by hand - this greatly accelerated my ease of dealing with Kana. I probably should have kept going with kanji, but unfortunately I got caught up with using the Heisig method which I now know is a mistake for a part time student like me. I think learning characters individually only works if you are doing a lot of immersion simultaneously (i.e. if you are a full time student). For a casual learner, its a waste of time because you don't retain what you learn without getting exposed to lots of characters in real sentences.

As for flashcards, I think anki is useful for starting out with a language, but only if the flashcards are sentence based, not individual word based. Ive seen research indicating that SRS is efficient for learning the most common words, but for less common words it is less efficient than just getting lots of exposure to the words in different contexts.

In my own learning, I find I've had to go back to basics - I was too influenced by 'all Japanese all the time' methodologies, and spent a lot of time with material which was too advanced. But it really didn't work for me - now I've gone back to simpler material I find my progress is much improved.

[jeffreybarker]

At some point, Matt, you’re gonna need to explain to my family why I keep leaving them in the middle of mealtime to watch your videos.

[favOriTe-ve]

I like your vibe so much. Your videos are very insightful.

[wildfp]

Matt. A video on habit. It is above the theory or grammer or verbs etc...Doing listening and reading for daily learning then flashcards, apps et al later down the line.

[Homere]

To learn chinese you wilk need to learn the hanzi to be able to read anything. The absolute best way to do that is to use memory techniques AND flashcards to help you memorize them over time.

When you have a superficial knowledge of the hanzi BEFORE you see it in context or in lessons evertyhing is so much easier to understand! The difference is huge.

[frankgradus]

I'm mad keen on learning new words.

[My_Cal]

80/20 rule. 80% of the words we use to a day to day basis, is only 20% of the language. Is that a good mindset to have?

[sunjenny]

I really enjoy your videos about language learning, And the way you explained your experience about language learning is working for me, I can stick on watching YouTube videos but I don’t listen to the content repeatedly, I just keep watching the new videos, does that still work?

[MisterGames]

As i said to an English learner... We write "me and you" or "you and me" but we say me'n you or ewan me and you will never hear And unless it is at the start or emphasised... I went to the park AND i saw a single shoe like Tom Hanks find. So learning AND will not help you in most cases.

[gayenorwilliams]

Have you started speaking yet using the dreaming spanish method?

[JoshuaTheBard]

Matt, it seems like you're suggesting not to study words, and that was the conclusion of the professor you interviewed in your last video it seems, but here it seems like you're actually advocating studying Mandarin words, and that's what you're planning to essentially do again to rejog your memory by writing them out? I'm wondering what you would recommend, and what that professor would recommend, for people starting out with Mandarin or Japanese - is sitting down with Anki and studying the most common few thousand words (or something similar, writing it out by hand etc) necessary, or is it avoidable? It's much more enjoyable to immerse yourself in things, but you can't really 'immerse' in a book when you don't understand a single word.

[spider]

That's a good video. It's good to see a CI advocate highlighting that other forms of learning are OK; that they aren't the work of the devil, lol