Fellow Science Lovers,
We’re picking up where last month’s newsletter left off. How to Learn a Foreign Language, Part 1 If you haven’t read it, it’ll give you some context, but it isn’t required to understand this one.
Listening Practice
In addition to making yourself speak your new language, you should listen to a lot of it from day one. (For the rest of this article, I’ll say “Russian” instead of “target language.”) But what should you listen to? I’d start with videos and podcasts listed for A0 or A1 students. These are beginner levels. Here are some features to look for:
-it tells a story completely in Russian (or with very little English)
-slow, clear speech (and the voice doesn’t grate on your nerves)
-ample word repetition
-the teacher points to pictures or objects while speaking in Russian
-anything with the phrase “comprehensible input” in the title
-it’s interesting enough to keep you engaged
-most of the recording has speaking. Don’t waste time with huge gaps of silence.
Avoid or spend less time on these options:
-Videos like “the 500 most common words in Russian.” This might be decent review, but you won’t learn new words very easily this way.
-Videos like “100 phrases for beginners.” Again, treat this as review.
-Grammar videos
Here are awesome options for intermediate learners, but I wouldn’t spend too much time on these as a beginner:
-TV shows and movies
-audiobooks
-video games
-any podcasts or videos that have very unclear speech or have native speakers are talking to each other
If you’re like me, you’ll be tempted to dive right in to watching Stranger Things with Russian audio. Or listening to the Harry Potter audiobook in Russian. As entertaining as this content is, you’ll end up frustrated. The words are too fast, slangy, advanced, and the pronunciation is often very unclear. It’s okay to treat yourself with this kind of material briefly now and then. Use it to gauge your progress. But don’t focus on this until you’ve learned enough vocabulary to help you understand a decent percentage of the words used.
But what about watching Stranger Things with Russian audio AND English subtitles? Don’t. You’ll focus on the subtitles and ignore the audio. We tend to block out what sounds like gibberish. Which brings me to my next point:
We Block Out Gibberish
How’s that for a smooth segue? But it’s true. That’s why we use “Lorum ipsum” as placeholder text. Designers want audiences to focus on the layout of word without getting distracted by their meaning.
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-from https://www.flickr.com/photos/pkwahme/4119110890, by pkwahme
And that’s a big problem for learners. Foreign languages sound like gibberish at first. And your brain will tune it out. Once I pick a story video that fits my level, I do these steps:
1. Listen one time through and see if I catch the gist. I make a mental note of any words that get repeated. It’ll bother me that I don’t know those words. I let my curiosity boil.
2. Listen again, this time pausing when I don’t know a word. Especially words I remember being repeated. I open the Google Translate app on my phone, click the microphone button, and speak the Russian word. When the translation appears, I see if it fits the context of the story. If it does, I save the word as a favorite and move on. If it doesn’t, I might type the Russian word and see if I get the right word that way. If not, I skip the word. (For my favorite podcast, I paid for the membership to get the transcripts and vocab list, which makes it much easier.)
3. Assuming I’ve successfully captured that new word like some Pokémon Go creature, I return to the content and rewind a bit. With that new word in mind, I listen again. Usually, the whole sentence becomes clearer. I don’t stress if I only understand part of the story. Each time I listen, I pick up a few more new words and keep moving.
4. After a few days or weeks of doing this, I’ll return to the old content and rewatch/relisten and see how much more I understand. And I collect more new words that I missed the first time.
I recommend you do the same. This will help you learn words in their natural habitats. You’re more likely to use the words properly and actually remember them. As toddlers, we didn’t study vocab lists. We learned words in the context of phrases and sentences.
Special Challenges for Listening
Depending on the language, you’ll run into different challenges. Here’s a short list I can think of:
-Chinese has LOTs of homophones (words that sound the same, but have different meanings). You really have to understand the context.
-Chinese names don’t usually sound like names to westerners. Even if you’ve never studied Spanish, “Pedro” sounds like a guy’s name. But is “Li Qiang” is a person’s name or a new vocab phrase you should add to your list?
-French has lots of silent letters. Especially at the end of words.
-Russian has lots of little, subtle sounds that pack huge grammatical meaning. Sometimes these sounds are hard to hear.
And no matter the language, listening often makes it hard to break syllables into proper words. In Russian, it took me a while to realize that “kozera” is not one word, but two: “k” and “ozera”, meaning “to the lake”. When reading, I can see the space between the words. But when listening, native speakers smoosh the two together. It takes time and practice to get so familiar that these problems go away on their own.
How Much Practice Do I Need?
I listen to around 1 to 4 hours of Russian every day. On a good day, I’ll listen to around 6 hours of it. Why so much? Because when we were kids, we listened to English for 12+ hours a day, every single day. If we want fast results, we must put in the time. There is no shortcut.
But how? I don’t have hours of free time every day for this!
Neither do I. That why I build this listening into my daily life. I jog for around 30 minutes every day. I do a Pimsleur lesson during that time. When I walk around my house, I wear headphones and listen to the Russian With Max podcast. I listen to his funny anecdotes while folding laundry, using the bathroom, brushing my teeth, eating, washing dishes, walking to the mailbox, raking my yard, loading my books into the car for the next sales event, driving to that sales event, and sometimes even while I play video games. (Or I’ll play Hollow Knight in Russian and look up all the unfamiliar words.)
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When I pray, I try to do it in Russian. When I read my Bible, I read the New Russian Translation. When I want to hear a sermon, I listen to a Russian one on YouTube. When I sing worship songs around the house, I find Russian ones online.
Notice that I don’t schedule a slot in my day called, “Sit down and study Russian for 1 hour.” Instead, I slide it into the stuff I was going to do anyway. I have to eat. I have to brush my teeth. I have to clean my yard. I might as well use that time to listen to my target language.
Otherwise, I’ll never learn other languages, because I’ll seldom find dedicated time for them.
Watch These
Even if you aren’t studying Russian, watch some of these videos to get an idea of the style of videos you should spend most of your time with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZcPkVxlRTc&list=PL3Pw2oUcx3…
Even though this teacher never says a single word of English, I bet you’ll understand everything she says. That’ll help you learn to think in your new language, and not translate everything from English.
Don’t I need to Memorize Words?
Some internet gurus claim you should never try to memorize words, but I disagree–especially when the target language is very different from your native one. Next month, we’ll look at how to memorize vocab the right way.
Writing update: I’m on chapter 34 of my next revision of Scribes Emerge. The release will slide into December. I won’t rush the release at the expense of quality. I’ll keep you posted.
See you next month,
Dylan West
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