Language Mentoring: Don't teach me, make me learn - Lýdia Machová at the Polyglot Gathering 2016

This video was recorded at the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin 2016 (www.polyglotberlin.com).

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Become fluent in any language.

Today, I'm going to be talking

to you about a slightly different topic

which is something to do
with teaching

something to do
with learning

definitely something to do
with languages.

And I would like to start
by thanking you all,

dear polyglots,
because you helped me get over

a huge feeling of frustration
that I had had for many years.

I'm serious now.

You know, I've taught English
in many different settings.

I started well since I was
a little bit better than my classmates

I started teaching them,

then I taught in primary,
secondary schools and

language schools, companies, and now

I teach at the University and I always

felt really frustrated.
Do you know why?

Because I always knew how I learn
languages effectively and how it works

and that it can actually be

pretty fast, that it can
work very well, but

I could never transfer
that "know-how" on

to my students,
I could never see the

progress with my students
whatever I did

However, I tried.
However many lessons

I had with them.

I felt really really frustrated
with that.

It's like: "Okay how can I make them

get what the language learning is about"?

You basically helped me
to figure it out,

because, this is from last year
some of you

might recognize yourselves in the picture.

This is where I came with
for the first time

into the Polyglot gathering
and I was

completely new
to the polyglot community.

I didn't know anyone.

I actually remember sitting
in one of these rows

talking to someone,
one of the guys

and he said: "Have you heard?

Luca Lampariello is not going to come.

He had to cancel."
And I was like, Luca who?

What? You haven't heard
about Luca Lampariello?

But you have heard
about Richard Simcott, right?

Well, sorry Richard, I hadn't
up to the last year's Gathering.

I didn't follow
any blogs or anything else.

I was just learning languages by myself,
in my own ways.

And then,
it was really really

inspiring to meet all of you,

to talk to 300 polyglots

who learn languages
in different ways

and to figure out
how you learn languages.

And I found out,
that there are so many methods

and they seem to be all working!

So for example,
Benny speaks from day one.

But Steve Kaufman says:
"I better

first build up my vocabulary,
I read a lot and listen a lot

and then I start speaking."

Two different methods
but they seem to be working.

Not just for them, but for
many people that are following them.

That's just one example.

Maria de Vera at the first
Polyglot Gathering

said: "I am a grammar nerd."

I start learning a language
by taking a grammar book

just going through it all

just to know
what the grammar is about.

And Emanuele Marini
basically starts with a dictionary.

He starts using the language
using a dictionary

so if he doesn't know a word,
he looks it up,

uses it in conversation.

So that's a different approach again.

Another example is Gabriel Wyner

who really is a big fan of flashcards.

Maybe you heard about him.
And Luca Lampariello, whom I now

do know, says he couldn't care less
about flashcards.

So I realized by meeting you
and by following

all your blogs and videos
after the conference

that there are just so many ways
how we can learn a language.

And it's not limited
to one particular method,

and that got me thinking.

I started thinking, what is the difference
between how the polyglots

learn languages
and how people learn languages

out there
outside of the polyglot community?

I'm talking mostly
about people who

take language courses
and go to schools, etc...

What is the difference there?

After studying all these polyglots
and reading about them,

talking to them, I think the secret is

that polyglotes do learn languages

and they are not taught languages.

I think this is really
the main difference.

It's about the responsibility
that you take for your own learning.

Because we just don't go
to a course.

I never met anyone here
who would say:

"You know what?
I happen to speak

five languages,
because I had an amazing

teacher he taught me all that"

We all have a lot of methods
that we use,

but it means a lot of work
that we put in ourselves.

To put it in more detail,

for me personally
learning a language is based

on four main pillars
and this is something

that I realized after the gathering,

and after looking
at many different polyglots

and how they learn languages.

I think first of all,

whatever we do
must be fun.

Do you agree
that learning languages is fun?

Absolutely! We just love it!

You know,
five minutes a day you take out

your AnkiDroid

and you
go through the vocabulary

or you take
a grammar book and

you do some exercises, right?

Well it can be fun, but it also means
that you use materials

that are interesting to you,
so you don't just take a book

that someone told you, this is
the best book ever for learning.

French or whatever.
You pick a book that you like, right?

It has to be a book
that smells good

that you like
holding in your hands

that has a nice picture, etc...

So, we need to have
a positive attitude

towards learning languages
and I think

this is so important, because it all
happens a lot in language courses

and in language schools for example,
that there's just one book and

people work with just that one book.

But, you know,
sometimes I'm not interested in

reading about the history of
Thanksgiving, for example.

And yet, we're spending
two lessons with that

talking about it
over and over again

I'm just not interested, okay?

I would rather
watch an episode of Friends

where I see
how Thanksgiving works in the U.S.

in practice,
and that's my way of learning

that's how I prefer to learn, right?

So, I think that
it's extremely important

that we do stuff that we like,
that we enjoy,

that we kind of...

pick up our own methods
how to learn

and our own materials.

Do you agree? Is that important?
Definitely.

Now the second thing,
and I think this is

probably the greatest difference
between polyglots

and unsuccessful language learners

who are struggling with the language
for a long time.

That is quantity.

It's the huge amount of hours
that we put into

our language learning
and this is something

you know,
that people suppose that

if you speak a few languages

"Oh you're so talented you know.

It's just so easy for you,

you just learn another language
just like that".

I hate to hear that,
because there's a lot

of hours that I put into every one

of my languages and it's fun hours,

because I pick
the materials and the

methods myself,
but it still is a lot of hours

that we need to
put into that learning,

and we need to do it actively.

This is the responsibility
that we have

for our learning.

So I think,
this is another huge difference.

The third thing that I heard
with many many polyglots

is that you need to do something

not just a lot of it,
but also to do

a little bit every day, right?

15 minutes here,
15 minutes there.

It's much more effective

than learning for three
or four hours

on a Sunday for example, right?

So, it's really really important to do it
on a frequent basis.

And finally, I think learning a language
is really much easier

If you have a system,
if you have a plan

how to start doing it,
how to end,

what do you want to achieve?

How to set your goals?
Etc...

So this is basically
my language learning philosophy

that I figured out
after the Polyglot gathering

and as I told you,
my great frustration

was: How to put this in practise?

How to make other people
learn languages like that?

And that's why

I came up with an idea
and I think

it's best illustrated with this picture.

An island.

and it's actually a metaphor,
that Alex also used yesterday

which is interesting.

When you don't speak
a language, you're basically

on the island,
on an isolated island right?

And you have
very limited possibilities,

you cannot communicate
with so many people,

so you're kind of stuck there.

Now when you want to get out
to the beautiful ocean

which is full of possibilities,
you need to get across the waves.

But as you can see
the waves are just around the island,

They're not everywhere
on the ocean, right?

So what you need to do
if you want to learn a language well?

is to take your boat

from the island
and row your way through the waves.

And I think this is something
that people don't

normally do very well,
because they row a little bit, you know

like have a lesson on Monday
in a language school

and then row a little bit
on the right

have a lesson on Wednesday
and then

they just wait.
They don't learn every day

they don't put in
all the work that we do

and so, the waves carry them
back to the island a little bit.

So they kind of move forward,
but then

they're dragged back
towards the island.

The thing is they never get across
these last waves

which are the biggest ones,
the biggest struggles

and I think personally,
that's the B-2 level for me.

I don't know about you,
but when I managed to achieve

a B2 level in a language

when I don't have to think about it,

I use it naturally
and that's why I don't have to worry

about the language learning so much.

I just enjoy the beautiful ocean
swimming in there

and using the language
in all possible situations.

But I don't have to row so much every day.

I think in order to get there
I need to row quite a lot

to get across the big waves.

So this is just an explanation
of how I see language learning

and I'm telling you this,
because I want to tell you now

about a few experiments
that I've done with my students

where I was testing this idea in practise.

I wanted to see,
if I tell people about this

and if I make them realize that

if they want to
speak a language,

if they want to know
the language well,

they need to start learning it
and not just wait to be taught.

I wanted to see what happens and
the results were actually quite amazing.

So this is something, that
I decided to call Language Mentoring.

I decided not to teach any lessons
ever in my life again,

because I am not sure,
if it's really possible

to teach someone a language.

That's again something
that Kirsten mentioned yesterday

and we heard it
in some other talks too.

Is there such thing
as teaching someone a language?

Well I call it "Language Mentoring"

and I'm going to explain to you
what's the difference

and how I go about doing it.

So I did my first experiment
at the Comenius University in Bratislava

where I'm currently finishing my PhD,
and as such I teach some classes.

I normally teach interpreting classes,
but sometimes

they ask me to teach something like
"the introduction to English studies"

I had 100 students
in four groups,

and I was supposed to do
two things with them in one semester.

I was supposed to improve their
presentation skills, so how to present

in the public and to improve
their practical English skills.

There are students on a B-2,
maybe C-1 level

but mostly B-2 and they need to
practice their English quite a lot

and you know how difficult it is
on the more advanced levels

to actually practice
in a systematic way,

so I said: "okay, let's do it!"

But I only had
45 minutes a week.

Can you imagine a class of 25 students
45 minutes a week and you're supposed to

make them learn or practice their
presentation skills and also

improve their English?

How do you do that?

And that's how.
That's what I did.

I tried the language mentoring
in practice.

So basically I told them:

"Okay guys,
I'm gonna tell you one thing.

This university is not going to
teach you English at all.

You're not going to improve
just by studying here.

They studied to be
translators and interpreters.

And I'm telling you that now,
so that you save some time.

So let's take the learning
into our own hands

and let's learn together actively.

I want you to do something
every day,

That's the frequency.

I want you to do a lot of it
and it doesn't matter

if it's watching series or reading books
or working on your vocabulary or grammar

or whatever you like.

We also have a system about it,
so we had a plan,

we had an accountability sheet,
etc...

so we put
some framework around it,

so that is not just, okay
I'm learning here, I'm learning there.

So this was the project,
the experiment

and some of the students
came up with

amazing ideas how to note it down,
how to monitor the progress.

For example one of the students
created a calendar like this

and every day she put in
the information what she did

like she watched some TED Talks, and
BBC learning and YouTube videos, etc...

and she put in the time
and then she counted it

how much time it was,
which was quite an interesting way.

She had it in front of her table,
so that she always sees it every day.

Now I'm gonna tell you

I'm gonna show you
what they actually weren't doing.

Because I asked them at the end
in a questionnaire all 100 of them

and it was interesting to see
that when you tell them:

"Ok guys, you need to learn
by yourselves, this is what happens."

They started listening to podcasts
quite a lot

93% of all the students,
they started watching TV series,

but not just you know TV series
with Slovak subtitles

as they would normally, but
English subtitles or no subtitles at all.

Which I think is much more effective.

They started using
AnkiDroid for the vocabulary

from other lessons,

they read books
and articles online

or watched some other
YouTube videos

or other videos
and they did grammar exercises.

15% of them, isn't that amazing?

I was quite happy
with that result

because I told them
you can pick yourselves.

We left it up to them, because
I said it needs to be something you want.

You know what you need to improve
so, make sure that you do it in a way

which is interesting to you
and so this is what they did.

and I asked them at the end:
"How did you like it?

"How was the learning program for you?"

Not the let's be taught, but let's learn.

And I was so glad to see, that
just seven percent of them said:

"Oh well, not really my cup of tea,

but the rest of them, you know,
said it was great

or it was quite interesting.

So they were really enthusiastic
about learning English.

Finally! I asked them:
"Has your English improved?"

Because I didn't have any objective ways
how to test it.

I didn't test them at the beginning
and at the end, I did it

with my second experiment which
I'm gonna to tell you about.

But these guys just said
by themselves like:

Do you think your English
has improved?

And we are talking about
two months here, okay?

Not a very long period,
just two months

October, November
and look at how many of them said: "yes"

at least a little
or even quite a lot in just two months.

And again, this was a lesson
of 45 minutes

where I didn't spend
any time actually teaching them.

We just presented with,
we just did presentations in the lesson,

but no learning was actually done
in the lesson itself.

It was all about them
spending time outside of the lessons

with English in a way
which they like.

I asked them if they would like to
continue in such a program

in another subject,

because, you know,
the introduction to English studies

actually had nothing to do
with learning English

or it was not the primary goal
and almost all of them said

"Yes, absolutely, let's do it,
it was good."

So they were happy about it,

they were satisfied.

Now when you look at the time,

how much time they spent,
Veronika was the most active student

and in two months she put in
81 hours of language learning

and I can tell you
these guys are extremely busy.

I studied the program myself,
they study two languages at the same time

plus they have some subjects about
translation and interpreting.

They often have as many as
12 or 13 subjects every week, okay?

And they need to prepare for all of them,
so they're extremely busy.

So when I saw that she could put in
81 hours of language learning,

just because she wanted to,

she wanted to improve,
I was really really happy to see that.

The other students were like
36-34 and on average it was 23 hours.

When you actually compare it to
what they would have

if I was teaching them
in the lesson,

we would have spent six hours
in two months all together,

because it was just 8 times
45 minutes

and now they've real learning time
which they spent by themselves,

not because they were taught, but
because they were learning by themselves

was 23 hours.

So when you compare that, it's almost
400% of increase in learning time.

Isn't that amazing?
And it's much more effective

and I think whatever I would do
with 25 students in a class

I could never find something
that interests all of them,

so whatever they were doing is
something that they picked themselves

and I think it was
much more effective for them.

Some of them worked on the grammar,
the 15 %,

some of them worked
on other areas,

that they needed
and everybody was enjoying it.

You know that fun,
it was a really nice atmosphere.

We spent seriously just 5 minutes
every week talking about the learning,

I asked them if anyone had any problems,
it was kind of motivational

and it just worked amazingly.

They often came to me and said
"Wow, this was so good,

let's do it in other semesters too."

And it's just one simple idea
you tell them

"Guys don't wait to be taught,
start learning yourselves."

So then I asked them,
how the program has helped them

and I was really happy
to see their answers, because

you know these are students who
just learned English at school,

they don't have any experience learning
by themselves and now they said like:

"Wow, I have never worked on my English
as intensively as during this semester,

thank you!"

or then the last one: "I never liked
listening exercises at school too much,

but now I enjoy listening to English,

maybe because
I did it voluntarily in my free time.

Maybe, yes,

What a good idea.

Really nice discovery.

And it was beautiful
that they discovered

kinda for themselves,
I told them like you need to learn

and these are all the methods
that you can use

for learning a language, it was beautiful
to see how they actually agreed with it.

Like: "Yes, yes, this is
much more fun,

much more effective,
I see results. Let's do it again."

So, then I did my second experiment.

I moved it a little bit higher even,
it was again with a hundred students

but different ones, different classes

and the program was called
"Semester with Language Mentoring".

And we just finished it last week, so
I'm still processing the results of that.

And the amazing thing is that I work
with a group of a hundred students

with 13 different languages,
not just English.

And it's because that in our university
you can study as many

as probably 20 different languages
to be a translator and interpreter

and they are
in different combinations.

So we have students who study
French, Spanish, German, Portuguese,

Finnish, Croatian, you name it
and students with 13 different languages

came to that class.
It was actually not a class

because I just told them:

"Let's do it as our free time activity,
you're not going to get any ECTS points

any credits for that."
In fact they are, but I didn't tell them,

because I wanted them
to have a genuine motivation.

It's a surprise,
I'm going to tell them next week.

Just those that persevered until the end.
They didn't know that.

I told them learn,
because you want to learn,

you want to improve your languages

and not because someone asks you to

or because you're going to get
credits for that, right?

So basically what I did
at the beginning is

I gave them a lecture
where I explained to them

what I just told you

about my language learning philosophy.

And I actually started by using
all the languages that I speak

so that they they see
that it's possible,

that they can learn languages too
and they were really inspired by that.

It was like: "Oh, wow this is cool!
I want to learn that too!

So, I told them: "Okay, now listen,
you need to put in a lot of hours

there is no shortcut
in language learning,

deal with it, okay?"
And I told them:

"You know, now I know
300 polyglots

and they say the same, so they trusted me
they took my word for it

So,I explained to them
what language learning is really about.

And I told them:
"Okay, let's create a plan

and let's learn according to that plan"

So, everybody created
their individual plan

and now we had regular weekly meetings

where I put them into groups
according to

the language that they were learning

and so this would be a Spanish group
and the French and German, etc...

And I told them to pick just
one language to do this with,

even though they study all of them
two languages,

because I think it's more effective

if you concentrate on
one language at a certain time.

So, we were meeting in three groups

once a week and
we were discussing the learning.

And the amazing thing was that I was
learning together with them.

I was working on my Russian
and we were all letting

each other know
how we're doing, and so

They could all see
what I did on my Russian,

so it was very motivating for me also.

Not to give up and
not to be lazy,

but to continue, because I was
the example for them.

So, that's how we met
and we discussed

all the learning problems
and there was

no learning done
in the meetings

it was all about learning
outside of the lessons.

And again it worked amazingly!

They spent a lot of time
for example watching TV series,

reading books, reading newspapers,
magazines, etc...

...working with their Anki vocabulary,

writing the Goldlist method, etc...

I told them about
all possible methods

and they picked whatever they liked.

I think that's really amazing
to see how people

can get excited
about language learning

when they realize
that it's up to them

and it's in no one's hands.
And it was nice,

because I could tell they
believed that I knew what I was saying,

because I studied the same program
four years ago,

I finished at the same University

studying English and German

and I told them,
"Do you have the feeling like

you're in your third or fourth year

and you're studying, let's say,
English and German

but you're in fact kind of ashamed

to tell people that
you're studying German,

because your German
is not fluent enough?"

And they were like "Yes!".
I had that too,

and and I said "It's perfectly okay,

it's because you're not
doing anything about

your language
and this university is not

going to make you a perfect German

or English speaker.
You need to put in the work yourselves."

I think they understood that
and now they're approaching

language learning in a completely new way

and they're writing emails like this:

"This is so amazing,
I'm doing it for my other

languages too and I have a plan to work
in the summer on my Spanish,

which I want to take as a third language"
So, they got really motivated

about language learning.

I did the group of this methodology,
this language learning experiment

also in small groups.

These are five my friends

who are learning English and Spanish
on an A2-B1 level.

And again, we met every week
at my place,

and and we had
a nice talk about that.

And I just wanted to see
how that works

and it seemed to be working
really well,

because they really are
achieving great results.

Or another group of people
who are actually

starting to learn a language
so, I am kind of testing the idea

on different groups of people

and now I started to organize
seminars even for the public

where I tell people
it's all about the learning

it's not about
being taught and it's mostly

you know, these people that go
to the courses are people

who would normally just take a lesson
in a language school but that's all

it takes for them to learn a language.

You know actually, when I was
here at the Polyglot Gathering,

I bought Judith's book
"Fluent Chinese"

I think it's called
and I probably put a lot of interest

even though I'm not interested
in Chinese

and I really enjoy the book
and then my friend from Serbia

wrote to me and he said: "Lydia,
I'm going to teach English in China".

I said: "Yeah, that's cool, good for you.

and he says:
"And you know what's amazing?

they're going to give me a private teacher
so I'm even going to speak Chinese".

And by the way how he said it
he looked to me

like he thinks: Okay, "tick" that's done.

You know, Chinese is another benefit
of the work for free.

You know, that's okay, so
I just sent him the book right away

I was like "Read this.
You better work on your Chinese

as Judith says, because she knows
what she's talking about."

And you know I think this really is
something that people believe in general.

Like all you need is a good teacher
and he will do the work for you.

You know and then these people go and look
for the best teacher who can give them

the the best know-how or the best
language knowledge

or something, but
I don't really think it exists.

I'm thinking teachers were always
to make the students learn

and I think the teachers
are very important

but the teacher should always stress

how important is
that students work on their languages

by themselves outside of the lessons.

So these are the seminars that I'm
organizing right now, testing the idea.

I'm gonna see what it brings me.
I took it as my private mission to tell

all the world that
this is what polyglots do.

You know, they actually
learn the language,

they don't wait to just be taught.

And as I said this is all based
on the four things

which I think are
the most important thing

in language learning and it'll be really
interesting to hear your opinion

whether you agree with it, whether maybe
you would like to add something

and now we actually have some time
for the discussion

so that would be that would be all
Are there any questions?

If you agree,

I will ask my question sir
then give it to you after

Lydia I think it is not a teaching,
but a learning revolution

you are pointing out
is really wonderful.

And one thing, with the first group
you showed to us

there were three percent
of people who

we're not amused with this,

I go to complain to the direction

I mean you are not a director
of your school, are you?

So, how the direction reacted to that?

Yes, this is one thing,
I'm very glad you ask

thanks for the question.
And this is something that

I was thinking a lot
about how to actually do it,

because it's a formal education, you know
I need to actually assess them now.

How do you assess
learning in their free time?

I asked them how much time,
we actually had a chart

and they filled in how much time they
spent but if I had told them you know,

those of you who will spend more than,
I don't know, 20 hours

altogether will get an A,
then I wouldn't believe what they say,

because they would just put in anything

So I told them, look guys,
officially I'm going to asses you

just based on the presentations
and we did a few more activities,

like vocabulary tests, etc...

but the most important thing
in this subject is the learning part.

it's the most important one,
but I cannot assess it formally.

So, let's just agree
that we are going to do it.

if you really don't want to,
you don't have to.

There is no way for me
how to find that out

and it's totally up to you.

But I'm telling you, this is your once in
a lifetime opportunity, you better use it,

because no other teachers are probably
going to tell you to do that,

so let's do it together,

so, I tried to motivate them
in a positive way.

And if they didn't, you know,
if they didn't like it or something

if they didn't put in all the hours
it's like okay, that's your problem.

When they were doing it,
they came back to you for questions

on particular points?

Yes, during the last moments
five minutes at the end, yes to discuss

whatever they want to discuss
about the learning.

Thank you.
You are welcome.

Thanks, you use the term "Gold list",

Can you briefly explain what that is
for those who don't know?

Oh no, I think I may not be
the best person to explain that.

David James, the author of the method
is here among us...

And the "Gold list" is a basically method
of rewriting vocabulary lists

at least two weeks after writing
the first list, so you go

you basically distill the vocabulary
and you rewrite 70% of the words

that were most difficult for you
every two weeks or more.

And it's learning
into your long-term memory

without actually wanting to learn,
without forcing your brain to learn.

I think you could talk to David James
about the method.

I think it's a really interesting one,
I'm using it myself.

How about senses learning tools

that can teach a student in order to continue his studies

to see one level after he finished his

intermediate and beginner?

I will not now talk about all the methods

I basically gave my students a two-hour lecture

about the possible methods I think it takes a lot of contact with the language

and it depends on you know what level.

If you'll be frosting about the upper

intermediate advance then I suppose that

people should work with native materials

and work with the vocabulary a lot and just listen,

listen a lot and read.

Because this is something that our students

just don't do enough of listening to start one thing

that at least in Slovakia is really underestimated.

Can we give the microphone to exactly that person

I thought you were the person.

I don't think James is here.

What a question?

I fully believe in what you're doing,

but how do you make it that we go out of our comfort zone?

Because I mean personally, I like reading or writing

this is where I'm going to do all the time

when I kind of don't go to the oral part because it's my tougher part

and I say okay I prefer taking a book that looking at a video,

so how do you push your student to go out of the comfort zone.

Very good question thank you

and the first thing I did with them

is for them to realize what are their three priorities

that they need to concentrate on

and I made them write it down before I continued.

So I said okay now think about it what do you need

to work on most?

For 93% of them speaking is number one

and vocabulary is number two

and then you know listening, writing,

whatever it is, whatever they chose

and I said okay, let's spend these two months

concentrating on your priorities and if you put in speaking

now I want you to actually write down

exactly how you're going to improve your speaking

and I gave them a range of possibilities

even including things like talking to yourself.

Self-talk which is an amazing way for introverts for example,

I think it's a good method,

so I told them various possible ways like

you can go to language cafes

you know you can use several websites

actually meet foreigners in Bratislava,

you can use italkie for online teachers,

you have a tandem we have Erasmus students

in Bratislava, so there's best possibilities

and I told them now pick one and

write down what you're going to do

and then we did a challenge and I told them

okay guys some of you said your priority is speaking

but I see in the chart that you still

haven't been to any language cafe

you haven't talked to anyone,

so how are you going to improve your speaking

and then I always tell them

it's very comfortable to do the things that we like

like you're reading and listening

where we are not also outside of our comfort zone

but you're speaking will never improve without speaking.

So I said okay before next week I mean this week

everybody needs to do something about

the priority that they haven't still done

anything about and you're going to report to me

next week and then I would ask them in front of the other people

so, what about your language cafe did you go?

and they're like yeah you know um

I already have an italkie session

booked for tomorrow.

It's like okay good,

So this basically motivation like that

I have for the mic back here

send it up front after one more person.

Here I normally don't plug things

but I recently took a course from sensible Chinese

for learning Chinese characters and I was extremely impressed

by the systematic approach that it's.

It wasn't specifically to teach me Chinese characters themselves

but how to go about doing that in a very regular

easy-to-understand way if anyone's interested good

Hi thank you so much for that presentation

you sort of answered my question

but I just want to know if there's anything else

so to ask it directly you had the puzzle pieces

there and one of them was system so you

discovered about you know, they make the goals

and then they work on their priorities and all of that

was there anything else as part of that system

that you haven't already mentioned?

Yes it's also the accountability sheet or count account

making sure that they are held accountable for their learning

which is something that I took

inspiration from the add1challenge you know the Google spreadsheet

where people write what date.

I think it's a really good way of making sure

that it's public everybody sees it

It's not just something they would report to me by email

that would be a lot too much work anyway to process

that so this is how I did it

we basically also make sure the accountability was there

I think that's an important part of the system.

Well first of all well done

guess what I agree, I said half of the things

that you said yesterday in your presentation

right yeah but better amazing work..

really really great.

One thing I was wondering is your group are all busy

taking and interpreting and translating degree

they're all foreign language students

you've got like a big self-selecting group of language nerds

to a certain extent maybe not as nerdy as nerdfest.

However you did then say that you know you were

working on it with your friends you've worked on it

with sort of even zero beginners

I think that's really interesting

because I'm looking at it's good

I'll do this in my town this is great

but I would never find you know like people

who are self selected language people

so I wonder if did you notice any differences?

Yes, surprisingly the students who study languages are not

such language enthusiasts you would probably expect

right and they often choose that

because they didn't get to medicine or whatever

But in Slovakia we have five universities

that prepare translators and interpreters

we have like 20 languages in there

so it's just you know you're studying

polish why well they open polish in m year

so you have students and students there

you know um however, I do work only with people

who do have a little bit of internal intrinsic motivation

I don't need to persuade anyone like if someone

wants to be taught and they are willing to pay a lot of money to be taught

I let them figure it out for themselves

because it's like I tell them about this

and it doesn't resonate with them

then too bad you know I decided to just work

with people who want to work because

I don't promise any miraculous methods

you know this is like

hey guys I'm going to help you learn a language

but you need to do the work

I'm just going to be the guide

I'm not going to give you the perfect method

which will teach you English in two weeks

So I guess this is this is the natural selection.

I tell people about it some people say like

well sounds like a lot of work

I'd better go to my to my language course

if others like the idea and we work together in the voluntary group.

Did you have anyone drop out like yes this went quiet on you?

Yes actually counted it yesterday

I think 76 people ended the course and were regularly going and doing this.

This is the things some of them broken you know like yeah you know...

I'm really busy this semester and one day I will do the amazing things that

you told us about and that's what for example Brian Tracy calls the one day.

You know people never get out of that. Thanks,

So I am a classical guitarist

and I completely agree with every single

point and when I'm hearing a lot from people here

is that people want to play an instrument but not practice

people want to speak something but not speak

and so that's so as a musician to language learner everything you said

is 100% true so if you have that comfort zone problem

to one day I'll whatever you want to call it

maybe both if you're an introvert can't do this because

you're setting up your own boundaries

and that is why you cannot advance

she cannot help you no matter how good

of a teacher she is if you are

not willing to step out so you get it.

I use this metaphor quite a lot

in my in my lectures on my students

I use the guitar and I show them a picture

of the guitar and I said if you like

to play the guitar.. how do you think you

will achieve that?

Do you think you could

watch some YouTube videos and practice

with on the imaginary guitar and then

once you know how to do it you take a

guitar and go and do a concert that's that word?.

I go like no, of course not...

You need to pick this along with the guitar

it's like okay what about speaking you

know you want to practice speaking and

you're accepting and somehow

by just reading something and listening to

something you suddenly start speaking in

a fluent way doesn't work

and it helps a lot when I tell them

if you know I've gone through this

process several times right now

I'm learning Russian and

I'm somewhere still in the wave zone you know still

struggling and still putting a lot of work

But you know even though I it's my eighth language right now

I still felt really frustrated at

the beginning it's like it is a painful process deal with it

okay you want to say something

you're talking to someone you could express it

in fact on the language ease

what you want to do it in Russian it's like

how do I say that you know it's really a painful process

but I tell them just keep growing

and it's going to pay off right

Going on with that it's like you want

to have a concert but you only want

to play the first piece in your program

you want to play a concert but

you're only going to practice scales

when you have other pieces

if you play scales cause I mean you can play arpeggios

if you play arpeggios

I mean you can play scales etc

so listen to her, excellent work.

ah I would have interest in your Google sheets that you set up

and I don't know it's like
because I did that too

do they have to do it every day

or every week and what what do they enter

because it can be too much it can be too less,

I don't know your balance

I'm experimenting with this again

I'm trying to work out the best way

with the first group we did it with colors

so we had a we had a sheet which was the

rows were this run from s 60 and the columns were individual students

in several sheets and they were basically

supposed to color the given cell for the day green

if they did well, yellow if it was like half the time

they were starting to they were planning

red if they failed that day.

and it was style of violet if it was a day off.

because I told them you don't need to study every single day

and so then you looked at the chart and you saw

exactly like a there's quite a lot of red cells in here

you know what's going on and then you could discuss it

with that student so that was my color method

and I even rewarded them like if you if you put it twice as much work

because you know students get really motivated at the beginning

and they start learning a lot

so I told them if it's a really active day

then make it a green cell and put in a smiley face

you know and then you can see like I have so many smiles

this week you know, they were very proud

to show the others, so that's my first method, right now

for making them actually write into the cells what exactly they're doing

how much time they're spending.

we're counting the minutes

and they're giving notes like what exact day

they were doing like 15 minutes of that 20 minutes of that

and then we count it together that's how

I could find out how much time did she spend doing

so it's even with numbers or with colors.

Actually I lectured two English teachers

in Slovakia about this and some of the

teachers were to be like I'm actually coming to try

these with my students and one of the teachers

worked with kids which are more like 10 years old

and she says it works perfectly

you know the kids are watching YouTube videos

and they're learning English

and it works well and she works

with the colors because they want

to have the green cells you know

and they even have a chart

in the classroom or color the things themselves

so seems to be working even for children.

Hi thank you very much back to my seat

thank you very much for your presentation.

My name is Johanna I created a kind of teach yourself method

language learning method some of my clients get private sessions with me

I'm thinking of one in particular he's a very busy businessman

I'm supposed to teach him or he's supposed to learn English

and I try to explain kind of the same thing you're saying

I give him a lot of resources with video he could watch

but I never tried the accountability option

what would you recommend for one-on-one sessions?

Because he has nobody else to to prove to

he cannot do a Google sheet with anybody else,

so what could you recommend?

Okay there's another thing that I tried

a mentor like that a friend of mine

with whom I said okay people are really

motivated by money you know people

want to have money and when they lose money

they feel bad about it.

So I think that's a good motivation too

so I told her okay you give me 50 euros

and you learning German, so I'm going to test you

in one month in 50 most frequent irregular verbs in German

If you fail the test, I'm keeping the money

I didn't see them but with my friends the two groups that I showed you

they gave me 100 euros and I told them

you need to stick it out till the under three months

otherwise I'm going to have a really good weekend

and so this or something like that seemed to work

for them too you know they don't want to

people are really really afraid to lose money

So I didn't want to take any money from them

because they're my friends

I was just testing the idea in this way

they were like you know I want to actually earn money by learning

look at that you know what an amazing approach

like if I learn a little bit more

I get a 100 euros the psychology of that

it seems to be working pretty well

if you haven't tried that.

Thank you so much that's really inspiring

because I would love to do some

of the thinking of mentoring methods

that you do and I was wondering

how you found different group sizes from

1 on 1 to 100 what have been the differences

pluses and minuses benefits of each one

and is there a size you would say

you would recommend not going past

I think this can be done with as many people as possible

and it also doesn't depend on the languages you know.

I help people improve their finish

I don't speak a word in Finnish

so it doesn't matter what languages there are even what level

I think it could be done with people on different levels as far

as everybody's learning on their own level

and there are some pluses and minuses

like I would say with this group of 100 students

it was extremely motivating that they met in person

that they actually weren't there together

and even when I did the lecture you know I'd propose

this all around the university

I said we're starting a new learning revolution here at the Faculty

make sure you kind of learn how pointless learn languages

and I had a whole roomful of people you know

and they were like it was amazing to see that this room

is actually full in one of the lectures you know

and that there are so many other people

who want to learn that was very inspiring for them

to see that their classmates are also doing it

and then I also put them into Facebook groups

where they could share resources for their individual languages

so we had a Russian group English German etc

and I kind of motivated them and I boosted the activity in the groups at the beginning

I even had assistants who actually

helped me with that and you know that they were motivated by other classmates

mentioning you know what they were doing for example with a will but

this thing the goal based method

I told them it's important to have a notebook

that you love you know you need to take a really beautiful notebook

and so one of one of the students in the Italian group

actually posted a picture of her notebook

as she said has anyone got a prettier

they were motivating themselves it's amazing

you just need to basically kindle the spark

and it seems to be working by itself

so I would say that's the greatest benefit of working with a group

and working with one on one it can be more adapted to the needs of the person

so for example I mentor a few people where I discuss their language learning

in the language so it is considered English

for example which for them is an additional practice

which they like I couldn't do it with the group

of a lot of students with different languages.

This is exactly what

I do in the finals

I said I'm a lazy polyglot and this is exactly, thank you

what I do I used all my time that I couldn't normally

use when I was at university queuing for the university restaurant

on eating with friends or washing dishes whatever

and I always have either YouTube or some friends to practice languages

with I think this is the secret, isn't it?

isn't it like people? people think like: oh you spent

two hours a day or three hours a day learning

and I was like no really no.

I mean I don't have that extra time

I'm quite easy so I just use I make sure I use the time when I need to.

Exactly those things, okay guys so just one more thing

if you if you want to find out more

I know the website right now in Slovakia

you'll probably not understand

You also have languagementoring.com

which I'm just starting right now so there is not much

but you can contact me there if you have any other questions or ideas.

Thank you very much.