Transcript

00:00 Transcriber: TED Translators. Admin Reviewer: Allam Zedan. 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 [Link] 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.
04:10 100 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
[Link] 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.
06:26 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 [Link], 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.
08:00 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
[Link] 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.
10:36 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 [Link]-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. Pào nǎozi. 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!".

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.
15:17 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 [Link] 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... Sing, song,
king, stung, hung. And the final idea here, the final action you need to take is
something that I call "direct connect".
17:18 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.