Name: 【TEDx】One Simple Method to Learn Any Language | Scott Young & Vat Jaiswal | TEDxEastsidePrep
Uploaded: 2015-09-26T05:50:36.000Z
Duration: 16 min 29 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

Scot Young: We want to start off with a question for you.

Basic quantifiers

By a show of hands, how many of you have put in time and effort

Gerund

Maybe you took a high school Spanish class,

or maybe you took a lot of Rosetta Stone,

but you can't confidently speak that language right now.

Vat Jaiswal: OK. That's most of you here.

Some of you are raising both of your hands.

So, we've tried learning a few languages ourselves,

we're going to talk about it in a minute.

But let's talk about what is the problem,

what is the main issue that is holding everybody back

Could it be that you're using the wrong program of study,

and if you were to use a perfect program or the application,

then you'd be able to learn the language?

SY: Well, here the track record isn't too good.

Out of the 1,000 Americans who responded to the General Social Survey,

only 7 claimed that they could speak another language very well,

And if you consider self-study programs, like Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur,

well, they can work some of the time, but they have another problem:

did a study that took an enthusiastic group of volunteers

and found that only 6% put in more than 100 hours with the program,

which is far less than what you'd need using these programs

that you don't live in the country that uses this language,

and if you were to move there, you'd be able to learn it.

Living in the country that speaks the language, definitely helps.

It provides motivation and an opportunity for immersion.

But it's not the answer to all of your problems.

If you go to the country and you don't yet speak the language,

Are you going to rely on other expats and locals who speak English

And that's going to create a bubble of English,

it is going to isolate you from immersing yourself.

We know of an American businessman who went to Korea,

married a Korean woman, had children in Korea,

still couldn't have a decent conversation in Korean.

So, living in the other country helps, but it is not a silver bullet

that will answer all of your problems on its own.

VJ: OK, well, finally maybe the problem is that you're simply too old,

and you should've tried learning the language as a kid

because kids learn the languages faster, right?

and Jennifer Larson-Hall of Qiushi University

adults actually learn languages faster than children in the short run.

reaching native-like levels of pronunciation and grammar

where children start to show an upper hand over an adult.

So, definitely, if you want to just be able to communicate with people,

you can't learn a second language at any age.

VJ: If those are not the core issues, what is the core issue?

We have a completely different hypothesis,

I want you to look at this image of the ocean.

Now, if you look at the water, you're going to see 2 distinct zones:

zone at the bottom where the waves are breaking,

an the zone at the top where the water is relatively calm.

Now, I want you to imagine you're standing on the shore,

When you first start swimming out into the ocean,

you ARE going to be in this first zone where the waves are breaking.

And swimming in this zone is incredibly difficult,

and they constantly try to push you back to the shore.

However, if you were to push through this zone and get to the second zone,

and more importantly, the waves are not trying to push you back,

you're no longer feel this incredible resistance.

So, we believe that language learning works very similar to this.

When you first start learning a language,

which we call 'the zone of fear' or 'the zone of frustration',

because this is where you fear using the language,

this is where you fear embarrassing yourself.

And learning a language in this zone is very difficult:

the waves represent this negative feedback

and this constantly tries to push you back to the shore.

However, if you were to push past this zone

and get to the second zone where the waters are calmer,

suddenly language learning becomes a lot easier, and a lot more fun.

Mind you, I'm not saying that you're perfect

or maybe you only know a few words, but you're able to use them confidently,

maybe you're able to have some simple conversations.

And language only goes from being always frustrating

to now being rewarding, most of the time.