Professor Reveals Way to ACTUALLY Learn a Language (backed by research)

Dr Diane Neubauer explains how to learn a language and what we should look for when it comes to finding both resources and a teacher. She also shares her method on teaching Chinese.

Links for Diane:

Website (where contact information & her future online class schedule will be posted):

Blog posts listing reading materials for Mandarin Chinese learners:

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[thedavidguy]

Very helpful video. In my experience the biggest impediment to learning a language is perfectionism, which leads to an unwillingness or reluctance to make mistakes. At least that’s my biggest problem.

[saregama-rtd]

I personally find a non-native speaker who has learnt the foreign language the best teachers, because they understand all the mistakes, the lack of confidence and the need for patience, kindness and encouraging the learner. They have a literal understanding of the struggle and common misconceptions.

[gaufrid]

Seven years ago I married a Filipina grandmother from Mindanao Philippines. I've spent most of the last seven years living in Cagayan de Oro City Mindanao with her. She is a polyglot, a fluent speaker of Bisaya (the Mindanao dialect of Cebuano), her tribal language Higaonon Binukid, Tagalog, Boholano, Hiligaynon, and English. As a young man, I'd studied French and Latin. I've been immersed in the culture and language here, and, as a result, I can communicate in Bisaya, and a little in Higaonon Binukid and Tagalog. I've concentrated on everyday speech, and the habits that native speakers have. I haven't concentrated on grammar. Over time, I've picked up the way that native speakers put their sentences together. The other thing I love is singing in the language. You can learn a lot that way. I don't worry if I make a mistake. Being able to think in Bisaya without translating back into English is something that I'm happy that I can do.

[NelsonStJames]

We definitely need more people spreading this message. Americans in particular have been told since I was young that: 1. After a certain age learning a second language is next to impossible, and 2. You will never be able to speak a second language fluently as an adult. Yet these people never seem to have an answer for why non native speakers coming to the U.S. often are able to do exactly what they are saying is impossible.

This is especially head scratching when one keeps hearing that English is among the hardest languages out there.

[jasonlockwood]

Informative and encouraging interview. Just about everyone I’ve known who only speaks English has declared they’re incapable of learning another language. In the next breath, they then proclaim how amazing I must be that I became so fluent in French. And then they ask: How did you do it? My answer is bit by bit, and all the while giving myself the opportunity to learn without stressing over perfection. I recognise I have a gift for languages, but that alone didn’t make me fluent. It merely meant I was able to acquire French more quickly than others.

I started learning French at age 15 in school, enjoyed it a lot, did well with it, and pursued an opportunity to live in a French-speaking country at some point. After high school I spent a year in Belgium, followed by four years in Quebec City at university. In both places, I held fast to one principle: minimise the amount of time speaking English, and maximise exposure and practice of French. Over the course of my first six months in Belgium, I became very fluent. In the time after that, it was all about improvement and mastery.

Flash forward to today (40 years later) and my French is very nearly as fluent as my native English. That was my goal from the beginning, and therefore my approach was likely quite different from those whose aim is to become decently conversant.

[ericcsuf]

You're a very good interviewer. You guide the conversation, then let the subject say what they want to say. You keep it about them and their responses instead of being about you and some agenda of your own. Dr. Neubauer was an excellent choice for for an interview.

[crooniegrumpkin]

Dr Neubauer is an impressive find. She offered lots of source-hints and ‘what-to-look-for’ advice for the independent language learner. I really appreciate that. Thanks for the video.

[EdwardLindon]

The point of flashcards is not to memorize vocabulary (i.e. forever). It's to memorize words until the next time you see them, ideally in context. Vocabulary learning is pointless without other (preferably copious) input. But continuous input without targeted vocabulary learning is also rather scattershot.

[qwlea]

Great video! People are quick to be intimidated by Chinese/Japanese due to the characters, but in my personal experience learning Japanese for 4 years, Dr. Neubauer is absolutely right about associating sounds/pronunciation to meaning first and then trying to associate that meaning to a character.

I started out mostly by just listening to Japanese through anime, dramas, and conversations with no care about trying to learn Kanji at all. Once I had reached an intermediate level in conversational Japanese, the moment I started consuming written content, my brain just absorbed the characters like a sponge honestly. Obviously I still forget certain kanji now and then, but you can't be too hard on yourself about it. Anytime you learn something over again, you will remember it for longer and longer.

I also believe that many people in the language learning community (especially with regards to Japanese) are far too adamant about using Anki or some other form of hard spaced-repetition training. I have not used Anki a single time while learning Japanese and am quite confident I could read 99% of words in a Japanese newspaper. Just as was stated in the video, the most pleasurable and meaningful way of acquiring words and character knowledge is by seeing the words in context from whatever material you are reading.

Language learning is all about taking baby steps to complete a marathon. It is going to take a while to get to the finish line, but even a baby can make it if they keep on walking.

[TheCompleteGuitarist]

I am a language teacher and a learner. As an adult learner I personally find that I speak way better than I understand listening to people talk. Mainly because they don't talk at the level of my competency. The issue is that parents modify their speech to the needs of the child. Adults are expected to just be able to handle it.

As a teacher working mostly with 9 and 10 years, native spanish speakers learning English, I talk to my students utilizing my classroom form of 'motherese' which gives my students time to hear and intuitively reflect. Similar to how adults talk to little children. Age appropriate.

Ultimately it is the responsibility of the communicator to make themselves understood, not the listener. If my students don't understand me, it is my fault, not theirs. I started to learn Spanish by listening to children's stories and reading children's books. Find a level and start there. While it is important that responsibility lies with the communicator, as the listener, we also need to tolerate not understanding everything, let some things go without needing to know why. The more we experience something in meaningful communicative context the more the meaning emerges from inside us.

Language is effectively an agreement between people that utterances (etc) have established meanings and context will guide us to it through repeated exposure. This is why we easily remember words we use a lot but words we use rarely we often have doubt over the exact meaning (even in our native langauge)

[Schpoizchnebel]

Dr. Neubauer has a very pleasant voice to listen to.

[laurar]

Excelente! That's exactly how I learned Russian at 60 years old, how I teach Spanish now and how I Homeschooled my children. Muchas gracias! ✝

[drtompalfi]

Hey Matt
Congratulations on a brilliant interview. Dr Neubauer was so insightful, articulate and passionate - a genuine pleasure to listen to. I am currently ‘acquiring’ Thai so the subject matter was particularly relevant ( especially re tones and characters)
Thanks again
Tom

[TheLopsidedobject]

6:38 I couldn't find any teacher advertising comprehensible input lessons in my target language. so I sent messages to several teachers and explained exactly what I wanted. I tried a few different teachers, and one in particular was amazing. I actually sent her a couple videos from Dreaming Spanish to show her what I was hoping for, and she nails it!

[aSnailCyclopsNamedSteve]

In general I agree. A couple of points. Many textbooks and graded readers present language examples that, while not incorrect grammatically, do not reflect real usage, either in structure or vocabulary. For example, in a sentence where book needs to be the first element, English will write, 'A book was written by Simone.' Lithuanian will write 'A book wrote Simona.' (with appropriate endings showing that Simona is the subject). Thus, starting with authentic texts avoids wasting time with inappropriate and misleading information and also introduces a suitable syntactical and word frequency from the start.
A second point is that grammar is extremely complex if you get down to the nitty gritty. Elementary grammar is a huge simplification. Thus the aim of the latter is to impede the user as little as possible. To spend 6 years learning French grammar without reaching any complexity is insane, but that is what we did in school. Better to spend a day or two on grammar so that it can be recognised and let the grammar seep in through using authentic texts. Obviously, I prefer reading to speaking because a. I have all the time in the world to study each sentence and b. there is no need to respond until I have a sufficient vocabulary base. But, it should be noted that spoken and written language can be very different and so a different method might be better for a person who prefers learning orally.

She is spot on on tones. First, I learn the basic pronunciation and then the accent. Meaning is not conveyed by accent (or in Chinese, tone) alone but also by the letters and the context. Thus, if I say 'I cooked supper, ' but pronounced cook as kook or kuk, the listener still understands me and his response using the correct pronunciation of cook will help correct my pronunciation in the future. It is only without context that it becomes unintelligible, like 'Eye kooka'.

The best way to learn vocabulary is foreign to native because you encounter the foreign in a discernable context but to learn the six foreign translations of 'table' lacks that context.

I obviously believe in diving not into the deep end but straight into the ocean, but with a flotation device to keep me from drowning.

[jori]

Sehr interessant, Frau Neubauer ist eine beeindruckende und kompetente Persönlichkeit!

[reginus]

I really appreciate the content you're making! It's so important to platform ACTUAL researchers/experts in SLA rather than self-proclaimed youtube polyglots.

[theidlelanguagestudent]

Very interesting how many different factors influence the language learning process. You notice right from the start of the interview that Dr Neubauer is not just a scholar but also an active language teacher with lots of practical experience.

[lisaahmari]

The read along comprehension stories on youtube have been more helpful to me in learning french and spanish than any tool I have ever used. If I had had them from the beginning, I would easily be fluent by now. It is the same concept that we used as little kids with our native languages: our parents read to us as we read along, sounding out the words. SO helpful in speaking/reading/writing and comprehension of the spoken language! And there are hundreds of them on youtube!

[victorjackson]

Diane!!! She is an awesome teacher and professor. I have worked with her for years. She is amazing.