The Importance of Repetition in Language Learning

CC subtitles available in: English, Russian, German, Italian, Chinese, Malay, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Hindi, Japanese and Vietnamese.

I'd like to thank the volunteers who created this video's translations:

Sofia Musto
Elizabeth Gomez Instagram elixabbriela
Hai
Phol Huỳnh
Alisha Kindo

0:00 - Repetitive listening and Stephen Krashen's theory of language acquisition.
2:19 - There are things we will not notice when listening and reading, and that's why repetition is key.
4:07 - The benefits of repeatedly listening to a limited range of content.
5:46 - I have been listening repeatedly in my Persian studies.
7:59 - Repeated listening and reading will help you learn the basics in a language.
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#languagelearning #languages #polyglot

[Thelinguist]

"Neurons that fire together wire together" said Canadian neuroscientist Donald Hebb in 1949. I'm not a neuroscientist but I believe that is a big reason why repetitive listening to a limited range of content needs to be a part of our language learning strategy.

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Social Media

[chrolka]

I used to have these cassettes that are sold with textbooks. I would listen to them over and over again to the point where i could recite everything by heart. This was before i even started the course. In the first lesson my teacher wanted to play sth from the cassette and i said there was no need cause i had it all memorised. The teacher was astonished when she heard me recite the lesson. She said i sounded like a British child (i am Polish and was 10 years old at the time). I had successfully acquired RP accent simply by listening and imitating what i heard repeatedly.

[WVCA]

In second language acquisition research, it’s called “narrow listening/reading” that involves repeated exposure to the same genre of text where learners come across the same language features and vocabulary over and over, which leads to their knowledge consolidation.

[jailtongiraodasilva]

I couldn't agree with you more Steve. I've been studying English for 6 years and now I'm trying to learn Russian. I'm studying a text with audio in Russian with the English translation and I will repeat this text 2000 times until the language Russian makes sense to me.

Great video. Thanks a lot!

[Musouka]

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10, 000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10, 000 times." - Bruce Lee.

[makokx]

Excellent video. I'm an American now living in Japan for 11 years. I passed the JLPT N1 7 years ago. I HATE language programs that downplay repetition, offering sweet lies about how their program will make people "fluent" with no effort. Anything too good to be true is and a language, like any other skill, takes thousands of hours of dedicated, deliberate practice and mindful repetition is key for fluent use (as it is with sports, music and any swift recollection.) I have so many friends and acquaintances that skim a work book a couple hours a week, think they are on the brink of fluency, then speechless (get it?) when they find they can't communicate even simple thoughts.

[TwelfthRoot]

This comes down to the idea of Knowing vs Being Good At something. People often think knowing is the goal but it's actually well short of the goal. Being good takes lots and lots of repetition to engrain language in our minds so that we don't even have to think.

[albert]

This is a very important aspect of language learning that very often gets overlooked but in my opinion is very helpful

[exequielcanales]

Thank you for your videos 🙏 i study English with you... when I feel frustrated i always come here to listen you and after that I feel more motivated again...

[bangkokadventures]

That makes a lot of sense. I have a Thai friend who learned English just by listening to music. I thought that was amazing! But now that I think about, she has her favorite 20 songs or so that she's probably listened to countless times. Complete mastery, of a limited amount of vocabulary, seems to be very powerful

[DaniLopez]

Thank you very much, Mr. Kaufmann. I'm cuban, and I've never been in an english - speaking country. But following you and other channels, I can manage to understand all your content, even without subtitles.

[jbvincent]

You have no idea how relieved I am to hear what you had to say about everything being incomprehensible at first. I'm just starting the journey into learning Russian (my first foreign language other than a Spanish class I didn't care about in high school), and I have been struggling so hard to find comprehensible input. Right now most of what I read and hear I'll understand maybe 10-25% of it. It's slowly increasing as I read and listen more and occasionally stopping to look up repeated words or terms that I don't know.

[dcel]

It's kind of like listening to the same song over and over, regardless whether you like the song or not, you will definitely remember the lyrics to the song you are repetitively listening to

[MrJerkensen]

This is a great lesson Steve. I use the same strategy, I've got like 20 french lessons in my LingQ cue and I've gone back to them now for over two years! If you think about it, that's probably all you really need to do because we only use the same 10k words everyday and those words come up a LOT.

[ralfj.]

Repeated listening is very effective, I experienced that again and again while studying foreign languages. It helped me tremendously.

[justincase]

I feel hugely excited to hear that you, Steve, adhere to the exact same point of view as I. Appreciate your work! Thanks 🙂

[JoseNobregaN]

I'm try learn english and your videos are one of the best things that i've found here in youtube to do this, Thank you Steve, You're the best.

[simeonbanner]

Very very good Steve. I've started on French in the last few weeks. As Steve says many pop songs, music from long ago comes back and I'm surprised I know the words. You know there's many many people peddling language learning theories but I think Steve's simple formula is the best. I've been studying Korean for more than a decade. I've really struggled there. I think I overwhelmed myself with trying to learn 5, 000 words without really focussing on repetition of what I did know.

[pablo]

As a fellow polyglot I would have to add that it's not just Chinese people who hold onto their native accent when learning another, it is almost everyone who learned a second language as an adult. It is extremely rare to hear people speak in a learned language without a trace of their own accent, no matter how strongly they hold themselves out there as having accomplished it.

[jeff-]

Two things form a very strong connection in your brain to remember something: repetition and emotion