How to learn any language in six months: Chris Lonsdale at TEDxLingnanUniversity

Chris Lonsdale is Managing Director of Chris Lonsdale & Associates, a company established to catalyse breakthrough performance for individuals and senior teams. In addition, he has also developed a unique and integrated approach to learning that gives people the means to acquire language or complex technical knowledge in short periods of time.

The people in the back,
can you hear me clearly?

OK, good.

Have you ever held a question in mind

for so long that it becomes
part of how you think?

Maybe even part of who you are
as a person?

Well I've had a question in my mind
for many, many years

and that is:
How can you speed up learning?

Now, this is an interesting question

because if you speed up learning,

you can spend less time at school.

And if you learn really fast,

you probably
wouldn't have to go to school at all.

Now, when I was young,
school was sort of OK but...

I found quite often that school
got in the way of learning

so I had this question in mind:
How do you learn faster?

And this began when I was
very, very young,

when I was 11 years old,

I wrote a letter to researchers in the
Soviet Union, asking about hypnopaedia,

this is sleep-learning,

where you get a tape recorder,
you put it beside your bed

and it turns on
in the middle of the night

when you're sleeping,

and you're supposed to be
learning from this.

A good idea,
unfortunately it doesn't work.

But, hypnopaedia did open the doors
to research in other areas

and we've had
incredible discoveries about

learning that began
with that first question.

I went on from there to become
passionate about psychology

and I have been involved in psychology
in many different ways

for the rest of my life
up until this point.

In 1981, I took myself to China

and I decided that I was going to be
native level in Chinese inside two years.

Now, you need to understand that
in 1981, everybody thought

Chinese was really, really difficult

and that a Westerner
could study for 10 years or more

and never really get very good at it.

And I also went in with a different idea

which was: taking all of the conclusions

from psychological research
up to that point

and applying them
to the learning process.

What was really cool was that in six
months I was fluent in Mandarin Chinese

and it took a little bit longer
to get up to native.

But I looked around and I saw all of
these people from different countries

struggling terribly with Chinese,

I saw Chinese people struggling terribly
to learn English and other languages,

and so my question got refined down to:

How can you help a normal adult

learn a new language
quickly, easily and effectively?

Now this is a really, really important
question in today's world.

We have massive challenges
with environment,

we have massive challenges
with social dislocation,

with wars, all sorts of things going on

and if we can't communicate,

we're really going to have difficulty
solving these problems.

So we need to be able to speak
each other's languages,

this is really, really important.

The question then is: How do you do that?

Well, it's actually really easy.

You look around for people
who can already do it,

you look for situations
where it's already working

and then you identify the principles
and apply them.

It's called modelling and I've been
looking at language learning

and modelling language learning
for about 15 to 20 years now.

And my conclusion,
my observation from this is

that any adult can learn a second
language to fluency inside six months.

Now when I say this, most people
think I'm crazy, this is not possible.

So let me remind everybody of
the history of human progress,

it's all about expanding our limits.

In 1950, everybody believed that running
one mile in four minutes was impossible,

and then Roger Bannister did it in 1956

and from there
it's got shorter and shorter.

100 years ago everybody believed that
heavy stuff doesn't fly.

Except it does and we all know this.

How does heavy stuff fly?

We reorganise the material
using principles that we have learned

from observing nature, birds in this case.

And today we've gone even further...

We've gone even further,
so you can fly a car.

You can buy one of these
for a couple 100.000 US dollars.

We now have cars in the world that fly.

And there's a different way to fly
which we've learned from squirrels.

So all you need to do is copy
what a flying squirrel does,

build a suit called a wing suit and
off you go, you can fly like a squirrel.

Now most people, a lot of people,
I wouldn't say everybody

but a lot of people think they can't draw.

However there are some key principles,
five principles, that you can apply

to learning to draw and you can
actually learn to draw in five days.

So, if you draw like this, you learn
these principles for five days

and apply them and after five days
you can draw something like this.

Now I know this is true because
that was my first drawing

and after five days of applying these
principles that was what I was able to do.

And I looked at this and I went:

"Wow, so that's how I look like
when I'm concentrating so intensely

that my brain is exploding."

So, anybody can learn to draw in five days

and in the same way, with the same logic,

anybody can learn a second language
in six months.

How? There are five principles
and seven actions.

There may be a few more
but these are absolutely core.

And before I get into those
I just want to talk about two myths,

I want to dispel two myths.

The first is that you need talent.

Let me tell you about Zoe.

Zoe came from Australia, went to Holland,
was trying to learn Dutch,

struggling extremely, extremely...
a great deal

and finally people were saying:
"You're completely useless,"

"you're not talented," "give up,"
"you're a waste of time"

and she was very, very depressed.

And then she came across
these five principles,

she moved to Brazil and she applied them

and in six months
she was fluent in Portuguese,

so talent doesn't matter.

People also think that immersion in a new
country is the way to learn a language.

But look around Hong Kong,
look at all the westerners

who've been here for 10 years,
who don't speak a word of Chinese.

Look at all the Chinese living in
America, Britain, Australia, Canada

have been there 10, 20 years
and they don't speak any English.

Immersion per se does not work.

Why? Because a drowning man
cannot learn to swim.

When you don't speak a language,
you're like a baby.

And if you drop yourself into a context

which is all adults talking about stuff
over your head, you won't learn.

So, what are the five principles
that you need to pay attention to?

First: the four words,

attention, meaning, relevance and memory,

and these interconnect in very,
very important ways.

Especially when you're talking
about learning.

Come with me on a journey
through a forest.

You go on a walk through a forest

and you see something like this...
Little marks on a tree,

maybe you pay attention, maybe you don't.

You go another 50 metres
and you see this...

You should be paying attention.

Another 50 metres, if you haven't been
paying attention, you see this...

And at this point,
you're paying attention.

And you've just learned that this...
is important,

it's relevant
because it means this,

and anything that is related,
any information related to your survival

is stuff that you're going to pay
attention to

and therefore you're going
to remember it.

If it's related to your personal goals,

then you're going to pay attention to it.

If it's relevant,
you're going to remember it.

So, the first rule,
first principle for learning a language

is focus on language content
that is relevant to you.

Which brings us to tools.

We master tools by using tools
and we learn tools the fastest

when they are relevant to us.

So let me share a story.

A keyboard is a tool.

Typing Chinese a certain way,
there are methods for this. That's a tool.

I had a colleague many years ago

who went to night school;
Tuesday night, Thursday night,

two hours each time, practicing at home,

she spent nine months,
and she did not learn to type Chinese.

And one night we had a crisis.

We had 48 hours to deliver
a training manual in Chinese.

And she got the job,
and I can guarantee you

in 48 hours, she learned to type Chinese

because it was relevant,
it was meaningful, it was important,

she was using a tool to create value.

So the second principle for learning
a language is to use your language

as a tool to communicate
right from day one.

As a kid does.

When I first arrived in China,
I didn't speak a word of Chinese,

and on my second week,
I got to take a train ride overnight.

I spent eight hours sitting
in the dining car

talking to one of the guards on the train,

he took an interest in me for some reason,

and we just chatted all night in Chinese

and he was drawing pictures and
making movements with his hands

and facial expressions
and piece by piece by piece

I understood more and more.

But what was really cool,
was two weeks later,

when people were talking Chinese
around me,

I was understanding some of this

and I hadn't even made any effort
to learn that.

What had happened,
I'd absorbed it that night on the train,

which brings us to the third principle.

When you first understand the message,

then you will acquire
the language unconsciously.

And this is really,
really well documented now,

it's something called
comprehensible input.

There's 20 or 30 years
of research on this,

Stephen Krashen, a leader in the field,

has published all sorts of
these different studies

and this is just from one of them.

The purple bars show the scores
on different tests for language.

The purple people were people who had
learned by grammar and formal study,

the green ones are the ones
who learned by comprehensible input.

So, comprehension works.
Comprehension is key

and language learning is not about
accumulating lots of knowledge.

In many, many ways
it's about physiological training.

A woman I know from Taiwan
did great in English at school,

she got A grades all the way through,

went through college, A grades,
went to the US

and found she couldn't understand
what people were saying.

And people started asking her:
"Are you deaf?"

And she was. English deaf.

Because we have filters
in our brain that filter in

the sounds that we are familiar with

and they filter out the sounds of
languages that we're not.

And if you can't hear it,
you won't understand it,

if you can't understand it,
you're not going to learn it.

So you actually have to be
able to hear these sounds.

And there are ways to do that
but it's physiological training.

Speaking takes muscle.

You've got 43 muscles in your face,

you have to coordinate those in a way

that you make sounds that
other people will understand.

If you've ever done a new sport
for a couple of days,

and you know how your body feels? Hurts?

If your face is hurting,
you're doing it right.

And the final principle is state.
Psycho-physiological state.

If you're sad, angry, worried, upset,
you're not going to learn. Period.

If you're happy, relaxed,
in an Alpha brain state, curious,

you're going to learn really quickly,

and very specifically you need
to be tolerant of ambiguity.

If you're one of those people
who needs to understand 100 percent

every word you're hearing,
you will go nuts,

because you'll be incredibly upset
all the time, because you're not perfect.

If you're comfortable with getting some,
not getting some,

just paying attention
to what you do understand,

you're going to be fine, relaxed,
and you'll be learning quickly.

So based on those five principles,
what are the seven actions that you take?

Number one: Listen a lot.

I call it brain soaking.

You put yourself in a context

where you're hearing tons and tons
and tons of a language

and it doesn't matter
if you understand it or not.

You're listening to the rhythms,
to patterns that repeat,

you're listening to things that stand out.

(Chinese) Pào nǎozi.

(English) So, just soak your brain in this.

The second action is that
you get the meaning first,

even before you get the words.

You go: "Well how do I do that?
I don't know the words!"

Well, you understand what these
different postures mean.

Human communication is body language
in many, many ways, so much body language.

From body language you can
understand a lot of communication,

therefore, you're understanding, you're
acquiring through comprehensible input.

And you can also use patterns
that you already know.

If you're a Chinese speaker of Mandarin
and Cantonese and you go to Vietnam,

you will understand 60 percent of what
they say to you in daily conversation,

because Vietnamese is about 30 percent
Mandarin, 30 percent Cantonese.

The third action: Start mixing.

You probably have never thought of this

but if you've got 10 verbs,
10 nouns and 10 adjectives,

you can say 1000 different things.

Language is a creative process.

What do babies do? OK,
"me", "bath", "now".

OK, that's how they communicate.

So start mixing, get creative,
have fun with it,

it doesn't have to be perfect,
just has to work.

And when you're doing this,
you focus on the core.

What does that mean?

Well, any language is
high frequency content.

In English 1000 words covers 85 percent

of anything you're ever going
to say in daily communication.

3000 words gives you 98 percent

of anything you're going to say
in daily conversation.

You got 3000 words,
you're speaking the language.

The rest is icing on the cake.

And when you're just beginning
with a new language,

start with your tool box. Week number one,

in your new language you say things like:

"How do you say that?"
"I don't understand,"

"repeat that please,"
"what does that mean?"

all in your target language.

You're using it as a tool,
making it useful to you,

it's relevant to learn other things
about the language.

By week two,
you should be saying things like:

"me," "this," "you," "that,"
"give," you know, "hot,"

simple pronouns,
simple nouns, simple verbs,

simple adjectives,
communicating like a baby.

And by the third or fourth week,
you're getting into "glue words."

"Although," "but," "therefore,"
these are logical transformers

that tie bits of a language together,
allowing you to make more complex meaning.

At that point you're talking.

And when you're doing that,
you should get yourself a language parent.

If you look at how
children and parents interact,

you'll understand what this means.

When a child is speaking, it'll be using
simple words, simple combinations,

sometimes quite strange,
sometimes very strange pronunciation,

other people from outside the family
don't understand it.

But the parents do.

And so the kid has a safe environment,
gets confidence.

The parents talk to the children
with body language

and with simple language they
know the child understands.

So you have a comprehensible input
environment that's safe,

we know it works; otherwise none of you
would speak your mother tongue.

So you get yourself a language parent,

who's somebody interested in you
as a person

who will communicate with you
essentially as an equal,

but pay attention to help you
understand the message.

There are four rules of a language parent.

Spouses are not very good at this, OK?

But the four rules are,

first of all, they will work hard
to understand what you mean

even when you're way off beat.

Secondly, they will never
correct your mistakes.

Thirdly, they will feed back
their understanding of what you are saying

so that you can respond appropriately
and get that feedback

and then they will use
words that you know.

The sixth thing you have to do,
is copy the face.

You got to get the muscles working right,

so you can sound in a way that
people will understand you.

There's a couple of things you do.

One is that you hear how it feels,
and feel how it sounds

which means you have a feedback loop
operating in your face,

but ideally if you can look at
a native speaker

and just observe
how they use their face,

let your unconscious mind
absorb the rules,

then you're going to be
able to pick it up.

And if you can't get a native speaker
to look at, you can use stuff like this...

(Female voice) Sing, song,
king, stung, hung.

(Chris Lonsdale) And the final idea here,
the final action you need to take

is something that I call "direct connect".

What does this mean? Well most people
learning a second language

sort of take the mother tongue words
and the target words and go over them

again and again in their mind to try
and remember them. Really inefficient.

What you need to do is realise that

everything you know is an image
inside your mind, it's feelings,

if you talk about fire,
you can smell the smoke,

you can hear the crackling,
you can see the flames,

so what you do, is you go into
that imagery and all of that memory

and you come out with another pathway.
So I call it "same box, different path".

You come out of that pathway
and you build it over time,

you become more and more skilled
at just connecting the new sounds

to those images that you already have,
into that internal representation.

And over time you even become naturally
good at that process,

that becomes unconscious.

So, there are five principles that you
need to work with, seven actions,

if you do any of them,
you're going to improve.

And remember these are things
under your control as the learner.

Do them all and you're going to be
fluent in a second language in six months.

Thank you.

(Applause)