DON'T overcomplicate language learning

Language learning is not complicated, it is simple, straightforward, it depends on the interest and attitude of the learner and the amount of time that the learner spends with the language. I've said it before. I saw an article the other day that there's been a catastrophic decline in language learning in the UK, and I'll show you some of the points that they raised there. And I know the same is true in Canada. The Canadian government spends almost a billion dollars a year now promoting French with the aim of eventually making Canadians more bilingual. And it has had no effect over more than a decade, two decades. I saw that in Belgium. French-speaking Belgians tend not to learn Dutch even though they have it in school. So the fact that people in Europe learn other languages, they learn the languages that they are interested in learning. There is an abundance of language content everywhere now. Unlike the situation 50 years ago when we only had one textbook and one teacher, we have lots of language surrounding us. The question is how do we convert this overload of information into language learning content? We don't necessarily need trained language teachers. We don't necessarily need teachers who have gone to a school where they are told how to teach language, where they are told how to test students, how to use laddering or role-playing or any of these other, in my view, somewhat gimmicky things that language teachers have been learning all of these techniques of language teaching for decades. And the net result is declining interest in language, declining results in language acquisition in schools. We have to take a new approach based on the world we live in. So, for example, if you are interested in the subject that I'm talking about and you would like to hear the same subject in Spanish or French or Chinese, that's possible now. You go to Notebook LM, as I've shown before, and I will show again, and you can convert it into a simplified podcast at your level with comfortable AI voices where you can learn the words and phrases that are used to discuss a subject that is of interest to you. Now, you may not be interested in my ideas about language learning. You might be interested in sports, in history, or whatever it might be. But the technology exists now to convert any information anywhere on the internet, just about YouTube videos, PDF files, whatever it might be, into meaningful and interesting and lively content to learn from. So, what we need in order to make language learning more relevant to people is not gamification like Duolingo, for example, which deals with essentially uninterested, disjointed phrases that people can't connect with. The other day, I met a lady at my golf club who's been doing Duolingo for 10 years to learn Spanish and still can't speak Spanish. She says, yes, because you need meaningful to you content. You need variety. So, I think this is extremely important. Variety of activities, variety of content, but always things that are of interest to you and close to your level. The next thing is, we need to relax. We need to create this great series of obstacles about how you have to learn this grammar, and you have to learn this vocabulary, and you have to learn the basics. Do these tests that if you get it wrong, there's something wrong with you. And a lot of obstacles are put in the way of the language learners. We need to say, just enjoy the language. Just listen and read. Don't worry about what you forget. You know, there are moments when you're just letting the language come into you. There might be moments where you go back in to try to focus in more on some points of grammar. You do it when you are interested. And meanwhile, just trust the process. If you are exposed to the language, you are learning. It's just like if you're on a treadmill, you are doing your body some good. You don't have to know exactly how much good you're doing. You don't have to know whether you lost X calories. None of this stuff really matters. You know you're going to feel good. You know you are, in fact, benefiting your body. The same when we learn languages. If you are listening to the language you're interested in, assuming you're interested, that's key. If you're spending time with the language, you are improving. Trust it. And of course, we need to have some humility. We are going to make mistakes. I'm going to try to make the same video in French later on, and I will make mistakes. But it doesn't bother me because not only do I know that we learn through mistakes, but I can't be so arrogant or vain that I can't allow myself to, say on YouTube, you know, to make a mistake in a language that I claim to speak. Humility at every level in the language learning process. Humility is important, including humility on the part of language educators. Another thing I would say is that we have to, if we are interested, and that's always the break in, someone who's not interested is not going to learn. I remember when we started with LingQ, we approached various companies, one of which was L'Oreal, which is the French cosmetics company, and they wouldn't put anyone on a language course that hadn't demonstrated the ability to use language learning materials on their own for at least six months. In other words, whatever it might be, be it Duolingo, be it LingQ, be it whatever, you know, teach yourself. If they had the discipline and the interest to maintain a program of learning for six months, then they would be eligible for a language course paid for by their employer, L'Oreal, in this case, which I think made a lot of sense. You can't force people, and this is something the Canadian government does, they send bureaucrats off on language courses in the province of Quebec at great expense, and of course the results aren't very good because the person's not motivated or disciplined enough to learn the language. And so we do need some degree of discipline. We need to approach the language with a certain degree of intensity. You know, I remember when I learned Chinese, going at it extremely intensively, you know, listening every day, reading every day, that higher degree of intensity that I applied to my language learning enabled me to learn better, I believe, than the other students who took longer to cover the same material. It's, again, getting back to physical activity, you have to approach things with a certain degree of intensity. That intensity, of course, includes the willingness to repeat, to go back and read something again, listen to something again, because through this repetition, again, it depends on where we are in the process, the repetition is particularly important, as I've said before. At an early stage, later on, you don't need to repeat as often, but if you have an approach towards language learning based on your interest, and this is key, I don't blame people in, say, English-speaking Canada that don't want to learn French, or French speakers in Belgium that don't want to learn Dutch. You can't force people to be interested in something. You can't create an artificial interest level. However, you have to make it easier for people to find content of interest, make it easier for people to like the language, or to like something about the language. And I think that's why getting back to the alarmist article about the decline in language learning in the UK, where they say we need more language teachers. No, not necessarily, because you're not going to have teachers for every language that people might be interested in learning. You need teachers who are able to take advantage of the abundance of information we have, the technology that's available, and enable learners to pursue the languages that are of interest to them. We need to mobilize the teachers that we have, and not worry about the specialist language teachers that we don't have, and somehow encourage particularly younger people to get an interest in another language, not by pushing an artificial interest in a language to them, but utilizing the interest that they have to convert subjects of interest to them into language learning opportunities. So, there you have it. Language learning is basically simple. It relies on our interest, and that interest is going to vary from learner to learner, from circumstance to circumstance, and of course, our willingness to put in the time. Thank you. Bye for now.