Why do we struggle to learn languages? - My take on Gabriel Wyner's Ted Talk 🧐

Today I want to comment on a Ted Talk about why we struggle learning languages. I found this talk very interesting because the experience of the speaker, Gabriel Wyner, was actually very different than mine. He uses "spaced repetition" a lot, for instance, something I personally do not use.
What do you think about it? I really encourage you to go watch it and hope this new format is interesting.
You will find the talk here:
• Why We Struggle Learni...
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[@baronmeduse]

There are several approaches to language which all work, for different types of learners. What Wyner does is make the mistake of deciding that his particular way is the 'key'. This happens a lot in language learning.

[@zantas-handle]

I think it happens a lot in MANY areas of life, when people extrapolate their own experience into a 'general theory'.

[@germanodalmasso932]

The best way to learn a language is to meet a woman whom speak that language.Very effective..at least for my experience

[@baronmeduse]

@@germanodalmasso932 Or a man surely? Or just a native speaker.

[@CouchPolyglot]

Great thoughts, thanks for sharing :)

[@musical_lolu4811]

It is disingenuous to say he said his method was the best. I don't ever recall that, or him claiming to have a 'method'. Maybe his marketing? I don't take the marketing of any of these things too seriously. If you get all that 'fluent forever' marketing nonsense - including this Ted talk - out of the way, I'll say he employs a fairly eclectic and flexible/adaptable approach to the issue, at least from what I was able to gather from his 3-day Creative Live workshop years ago which was pretty intensive and meaty.

[@fionarussell9392]

I want to qualify thinking. I taught English and French at university and have studied nine languages to a range of levels, from beginner to fluency. I found Gabriel Wyner's take very fresh. Personally, I use a mixture of Krashen-style comprehensive input, lots of speaking from the start via Tandem, iTalki and events. I also do storylearning and acquisition through speaking to people with magazines. One of the things Gabriel Wyner discusses in his book completely correlates with what you say about the emotional aspect of language learning (which is essential). Unlike most Anki users, he wants us to connect with images and think in the language rather than through translation, which is excellent advice. The only problem is that making his style of flashcards in Anki is extremely time-consuming and laborious. The app he has developed to circumvent this cuts out a lot of time, but it's still a bit long to use. Another point he makes that resonates is not learning grammar through exercises, but rather through analysis of model sentences. I love grammar, but since tailoring my approach to this method, I get on much better with learning grammar rather than laboriously studying case tables and irregular conjugation books. At the end of the day, language learning is a deeply personal journey, but emotional connection is key and I do think his method addresses this.

[@CouchPolyglot]

Wow, thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts and experience in such detail. Super useful, thanks 🙏😊

[@kodyrrr]

I haven't listened to the TED talk but your summary was interesting. A part that you mention, kind of off-hand, was that you do a lot of self-talk before you go into a conversation. I imagine sort of like working through different ways to say things, express yourself and such. I do self talk a lot. It helps me decide how I want to say something in a given situation and also gives me a bit more confidence that I will be able to express myself. If anything, it's keeping the mind actively thinking in the target language which is definitely helpful in learning. Anyway, those are my thoughts on the video. Good job, and I think the reflection format is cool.

[@CouchPolyglot]

Thanks a lot! Yeah, self talk helps a lot 😄

[@Eternal_Foreigner]

Spaced repetition I've found to be good for certain words, but it depends a lot on the word. Rare words tend to have a lot more nuance, which makes them very hard to learn that way. But common words also don't make sense to learn that way, because they're so common you'll pick them up naturally. But for the words in-between, especially words with a simple meaning but still uncommon, spaced repetition is fantastic for these. Some examples: "ant", "cupboard", "hover"

[@CouchPolyglot]

That is interesting, thanks for sharing 😊

[@putinisakiller8093]

The space repetition method is not for remembering words. It's just a little part that almost everyone consider as the main. This approach lets you to remember anything - grammar, language patterns, phrases, pronunciation, words, meanings, parts of speech... It's just a way that no one couldn't use even in 10%.

[@WineSippingCowboy]

I read Fluent Forever. It is helpful 🙂 I used spaced repetition. It works ok 👌 for me. For me, story learning and conversations are better ways for me to learn. Both of my parents are polyglots, fluent in 3 languages. Other relatives know more than 3! 🤯 As for me, I speak Spanish 🇪🇸, French 🇫🇷, German 🇩🇪 and Tagalog 🇵🇭. The last language on this list, Tagalog, is recent for me.

[@CouchPolyglot]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Fluent Forever 👍👍👍 So cool to have both parents who are polyglots 😍

[@emmasayers7576]

I'm English and have learned several European languages to various degrees. I think one of the main reasons people whose first language is English have trouble learning other languages is that English is a distilled version of German, French, Latin... among others! Some concepts just don't exist (or exist in a different way) - it's like trying to explain what colours are to a person who has never been able to see.

[@jdubruyn]

Yeah, I was thinking something similar, even though I couldn't articulate the thought... When I heard the Hungarian word for camera in Gabriel's talk I was thinking how the root for the specific sounds for pronunciations must have 'objective' reasons in order to associate to the sound/emotion independently, but how language is really a social tool used for communicating knowledge, so it is going to be unique to the heritage of the language(or country), which is possibly going to be very subjective (or very abstract)... because languages are pretty old and things have changed a lot relatively speaking... some things though will be the same and won't change😉

[@ajs41]

I'm English and I find it almost impossible to learn other languages to any standard, which is extremely annoying. Especially as my grandmother was German originally and didn't have a problem learning English, and apparently my great-grandmother could speak about 5 languages.

[@emmasayers7576]

@@ajs41 Perfect example. Your grandmother had a brain that was wired with German. She learned to say die, der, das, den, dem and had to "unpick" her wiring to learn how to say "the". You had to do the reverse. It's clear who is going to find it easier, so don't feel bad. Try French, Spanish, Italian or Catalan as a first step and leave German until later. I find the Latin languages to be much closer to English in terms of vocabulary and structure, if not pronunciation. Normal French is often often just "posh English". Although you may find the rolling R hard, Italians pronounce all the letters they write, so that's another bonus for the language learner. What I'm saying is, find what you know in another language and then build up.

[@CouchPolyglot]

Well, for foreigners English is not always easy either, e.g. phrasal verbs, pronounciation of what is written as "one letter" but is pronounced in different ways "randomly", etc. "Der, die, das" can be indeed a pain, but not having a perfect grammar does not stop you from communicating. I think there are a couple of things that play a big role: - The mindset - if you think of yourself as someone "who can't learn" due to your past experiences, you will have more difficulty - Growing up monolingual will surely make it more difficult because you've never had to think about how language works at all, so the later you start, the more difficult it will be. But again, this is partly due to mindset - The "wrong method for your needs". Everyone is different, but languages are globally being taught mostly in "one way". Most people do not know how to find out which learning style fits them best. They try one and then they are like "I am not good at languages, I am never going to try this again" (again, mindset) The same actually happened to me with programming languages. I somehow was not able to change my mindset and got stuck with "I am not good at this, I can't do this", but if I am honest to myself, I only tried to learn it one way. If I had tried several strategies, maybe I would have succeeded. Maybe I would not be "a great programmer", but I would be able to code, which I can't. So again, mindset plays a huge role, in my opinion :)

[@Lucretia9000]

I have his book and it's a really easy read, for as far I got, I do intend to get back to it. It's an interesting idea on how to learn a language and I'm a technical person and think his method may work for me, yet to test. I didn't know he did a ted talk, so I'll have to watch it. His background is interesting, as his job, opera singer, involves singing in multiple languages. But, what works for one person, might not work for you. What I found particularly interesting what his suggestion to learn the IPA of the language, which he states will give you the accent of the target language, 😁.

[@CouchPolyglot]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this, everyone is different, so what works for some doesn't for others :) I hope it works for you 🙂🤞

[@putinisakiller8093]

@@CouchPolyglot The right phonetics ALWAYS works. 😊

[@HelgeMoulding]

I have spoken only German to my granddaughter since she was prelingual. These days she's four and understands me fine, though she doesn't speak fluently, yet.

[@CouchPolyglot]

Thanks a lot for sharing, this sounds very interesting. Keep it up, it is a wonderful gift :)

[@futurez12]

LIke you, I think he was probably doing some comprehensible input along with his decks of SR. For that reason, I don't personally believe the _'there are many ways to learn a language'_ idea. I think we all learn the same way,. It's just that some of us don't know what that way actually _was_ and so put it down to something else they did. I get why people (who know it's _really_ comprehensible input that got them success) don't say that on a public forum like KZbin - because it triggers those who think it was all the Anki revision they did, or all the grammar exercises and vocab lists they made, and who wants to deal with those kinds of comments? 😂It's just an easier life to let them think whatever they like. I guess if they still get there, it doesn't really matter what they personally believe made the difference, only that the advice they then give other people can be misleading.

[@CouchPolyglot]

That is an interesting point of view, I had never thought about it this way... If you had asked me a few years back, I would have said that I learned English "in school 50% and watching movies and reading books 50%", but now I think it was more "school 10%, input 90%"

[@ValentinCabezas]

I used space repetition for an agrology class to learn 50 species of grass and trees and their characteristics. I passed the exam but I think that making the flashcards, choosing the pictures and editing it, was the key for me to remember. I think Duolingo works with spaced repetition too

[@CouchPolyglot]

Interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing. Not all polyglots like Duolingo, but I do. So I guess if that is spaced repetition, I do use it sometimes, but more in a "gamified set up" I guess :D

[@habeng7208]

Thanks for the video lovely Laura. I think language learning is a bit more complicated than one or two techniques that might speed up the learning process. The best analogy I have found for language learning/acquisition is that it is like a construction project. There are different approaches, some more effective than others. But in the end of the journey, what matters is how well the project was designed, coordinated and implemented. It’s not about how fast you’ve learned, but also about enjoying the experience (like you said, having an emotional connection to the target language). And of course, there are many tips and suggestions that can enrich the learning process 🎁📚🧐👩🏻‍🏫👨‍🏫

[@CouchPolyglot]

That was a nice metaphor, thanks a lot 😄👍

[@maufernandez4270]

Me gustó su video, pero creo que cada quien tiene su forma de aprender. Yo lo que trato de hacer es hacer todo lo que algunos dicen y ver si me funciona. Saludos.

[@CouchPolyglot]

Exacto, cada persona es un mundo, no todos aprendemos 100% igual, hay que ir probando

[@thomasfleck6552]

💁‍♂️different methods will work for different people... btw that's also how we started to learn english at school, english only from day one💪

[@CouchPolyglot]

Exactly 😊👍

[@grancapoEstiqaatsi]

I use spaced repetition, in the form of phrases, but then I try to use the new words as soon as possible in conversations, to create that link with real life

[@CouchPolyglot]

Thanks for sharing your strategy!

[@aoife8859]

I have ADHD and I become insanely interested in something, I'm obsessed and dedicate all my time and energy to it. But then I lose energy to do anything at all so it's harder to stay motivated 😔

[@CouchPolyglot]

sorry to hear that, I've heard the pomodoro method can help focus if you have ADHD, but it is only something I heard, maybe you can look it up and try it out? It can help take away the distractions and hopefully it helps! Also "atomic habits" might help, as you just take it all one step at a time (taking a small step is always easier than imagining a whole task as "a big thing", if you break it out in small steps, it is "easier"). (I have no experience with ADHD, but it would be great if these tips can help)

[@zantas-handle]

I believe that it happens a lot in MANY areas of life, when people extrapolate their own experience into a 'general theory'. It seems that Social Media actively enables this exaggeration of individual perspectives. Just look at the comments - I feel that people often assert their opinions as facts. We seem to have forgotten the idea of _suggesting_ a perspective with words like 'perhaps', 'I think' or 'it's possible that'.

[@CouchPolyglot]

Yeah, I try as much as I can to highlight that what I say is related only to my experience, cause I also don't like it when everything is to reduced to "X one rule", the truth is there are many paths to reach the same goal, in languages and in many areas in life (like nutrition or fitness, which are topics that e.g. social media often treats as "this or nothing"). Also people will sometimes make claims like "this is scientifically proven", but science keeps discovering new things and old theories might appear primitive

[@musical_lolu4811]

Has nothing to do with social media. We've been at it probably since the dawn of language itself.

[@zantas-handle]

@@musical_lolu4811 Yes, I did say Social media 'actively enables' this behaviour - that means that yes, it already existed, but Social media has made it easier and helped propagate it even further.

[@benverret7968]

What mic are you using? I want the lights that show the volume as you speak.

[@CouchPolyglot]

It's called Shure SM7B :) Glad you like it!

[@decluesviews2740]

I used Pimsleur, which uses spaced repetition, and it was helpful for me. However, I wasn’t as consistent as I should have been, so I didn’t get the full benefit.

[@CouchPolyglot]

Interesting, thanks for sharing 😄

[@deutschmitpurple2918]

😊😊😊

[@CouchPolyglot]

😊

[@Dude-ln8pe]

Do you have any idea about the intermediate plateau in language learning? And how to overcome it?

[@CouchPolyglot]

That is a good topic, I should talk about it in a future video In a nutshell, I would say you need to make your language learning a priority and have a daily routine. If you are not able to see "what you are missing", getting a tutor can surely help. As always I recommend finding a way that is fun and automated (e.g. "I only look up things in Google in language X", "whenever I am preparing breakfast or commuting, I listen to a podcast"). Hope this helps 😌

[@kliudrsfhlih]

I'm an MA applied linguistics student. I am spending my academic life trying to approach SLA as a science and trying to inform people about the science. There aren't a lot of issues where there is consensus in SLA, which is a problem. Some theories account for the same facts in different ways, which is another problem. However, we do have lots of research and evidence, and we can at least go ahead and try to use that (as opposed to talking about personal experiences and opinions; like in the humanities). 1) that TED speaker begins by talking about the "myth" of children learning faster. I would like to point out a few things. People who believe this do not always use native speaking children for the comparison, but also immigrant children who learn to speak their L2 fluently (and pronounce it well) after one year. This happens because of some situational causes, including the time on task which is thousands of hours, when adults end up spending a 100 hours throughout the same one-year period (as the TED speaker points out), but also the extremely small size of their vocabulary and grammatical repertoire. But this is not the end of the story. I feel sometimes people want to believe counterintuitive things because it makes them feel more intellectual, but the actual observation he would have to oppose is not (in research) that children learn fast and adults struggle, but that (statistically) adults in many learning contexts including naturalistic ones achieve less in terms of accuracy and show a lot of fail-success variation which does not exist in children learning their L1s and is not as pronounced in children learning their L2s. As you can see this is a long, nuanced sentence, that's why it's difficult to communicate, we prefer unnuanced, easy to understand things (like Krashen's hypothesis, no offense to him btw, he is still kind of right, he just has very reductive takes on very complex issues, at least in the context of academia). I recommend Michael Ullman's Abralin talk on the declarative-procedural model for SLA, which is a research-based neurological model of second language acquisition that deals with the brain's memory systems. His model can explain why adults become less efficient at learning languages, because as we age the procedural memory system declines. 2) When it comes to spaced-repetition, there is no scientific theory where flashcards result in fluent speech. It also cannot help with depth of knowledge, words can only be used when you know their connotation, common collocations, its grammar, other possible synonyms that are less appropriate to use, and other types of information. However, vocabulary flashcards can help with comprehension and they are very efficient at that. For more phrasal stuff, when accompanied by actual experiences and input, sentence falshcards *may* also help to proceduralise grammar, under Ullman's model. It is important to understand however, that spaced repetition cannot offer almost anything in terms of pragmatics (when to say what to whom), socially acceptable use or culturally bounded expressions. For that you need input, experience, attention and sensitivity as well as some guidance sometimes.

[@CouchPolyglot]

Thanks a lot for your comment, it was very interesting 👍👍👍

[@hcm9999]

I have never used Anki, spaced repetition or any other kind of flashcards.

[@CouchPolyglot]

me neither, I thought it was just me hehe Though someone said Duolingo uses a similar method, and I have used that app, for instance!

[@KratosThunder-qr7ih]

I've seen that ted talk you're referring to and yeah im a bit skeptical as well as you are coz that's not how ive learned English, and i think he isn't really telling the whole truth like for instance he was interviewed with a language he was learning for a short period of time and it was his very first time speaking the language but he nailed it...... I find it poppycock tbh .

[@CouchPolyglot]

I have only seen that talk, I would need to further investigate 👀

[@ajs41]

As an English person I find it very frustrating that I find it so difficult to learn other languages. Sometimes it makes me wonder whether it's something to do with the English language itself, but this probably isn't true. It's probably just laziness on the part of English speakers like me.

[@daysandwords]

I would say English actually makes a lot of other languages EASY (and I'm not the only one who thinks that). English makes a lot of distinctions in both concept and sound that other languages don't make, and therefore we just have to think "A or B = just say A" whereas the foreigner learning our language has to try to work out why there's such a thing as B. e.g. Chinese, he, she and it... They're all the same in Mandarin. They think it's weird that we would bother. Japanese has something like 25 phonemes while English has 43 to 46 depending on accent. Why is it "three" but "these" (those TH sounds aren't the same, if you take a moment to consider it). What is the difference between "this one" and "that one"? We know it so so clearly but it's almost impossible to define. I'm not saying languages are easy... they're not. But English certainly makes some of them a touch easier.

[@CouchPolyglot]

There are many things to take into account, but as an English speaker your language shares 40% of vocabulary with French, for instance. Grammar will differ in languages from different families, but popular languages for English speakers, such as Spanish or French, have the same sentence structure and as mentioned very similar vocabulary. Learning a language takes time and some methods make it feel like there is a shortcut, but it will still take perseverance and dedication. If you are monolingual, it can be that learning your first language is harder, both due to it being "a new thing for your brain" and also due to mindset ("I am a slow learner", "I will never learn this"). It is like learning how to swim or ride a bike, you need lots of practice and you will fall/fail a lot too. But if you find a way to do it that is fun for you, you will stick to it and make daily progress. Hope this helps 😌

[@poljento]

I find spaced repetition systems (I do Anki) very efficient, but it's a chore. I didn't use Anki while learning Spanish, but felt like I needed it for Japanese. It definitely would have made my Spanish learning faster as well. So if you can stick to it without soul-crushing pain, I would definitely recommend it for at least beginners and lower intermediates. PS: Wyner's moktor story happens in "Scandinavia", not Finland. The word (or the drink) is definitely not Finnish, and I doubt it's from a Scandinavian language either. Either the story is made up, it's a drink specific to that bar, city, or region, or it's a minority language I don't know. Google doesn't know anything about the drink. PPS: Is something wrong with the audio?

[@ValentinCabezas]

The audio is fine for me

[@poljento]

@@ValentinCabezas Ok, thanks. Weird.

[@CouchPolyglot]

thanks for the comment, I do think that Spaced repetition systems can be helpful, but as you mention it is a chore, and I prefer to keep my learning fun (as much as I can anyway!), so I prefer to opt out of that. I was actually holding the micro in my hand, so maybe that is why sometimes the sound "goes away". I will now move again to a new place so I hope I can figure out a better set up there hehe :)

[@poljento]

@@CouchPolyglot Thanks for the reply! I agree, I have wanted to keep my studies as fun as possible, too. But it can also be motivating to progress fast. And again, it seems almost impossible to find a way to study kanji without some discomfort. 😅 I haven't watched your videos in a while, so I what I noticed in the audio is an unpleasant metallic tone, especially when listening with headphones. I tried two types of headphones, and it's still there. It seems to be there in other videos, too, but it's less bad when the mic is on the table. I know nothing about mics, but maybe that's because you're further from the mic if you're not holding it?

[@CouchPolyglot]

@@poljento I think that is one of the reasons I feel restistant to learning Japanese... I would love to but part of it "feels boring" compared to the way I normally learn. And I would be afraid to progress too slowly somehow... thanks for your feedback, and sorry to hear that! Yeah, my recording situation in the new flat was not the best, but I am moving again and I will try to improve it for the future... Though some of the next videos are recorded in this way too... hopefully it is not too bad, but I will try to fix it moving forward!

[@skellermann]

I wonder what's the alternative to "spaced repetition" for you not to like it. No repetition? Random repetition? Concentrated repetition? It would be interesting if you could actually elaborate a bit more in terms of what you actually mean when you say "I am not a fan of spaced repetition".

[@CouchPolyglot]

I do not like listening to something and repeating it, I would rather learn with comprehensible input. If you listen to input every day, there will be words that will naturally appear again and again, so you will learn them in a "natural way" and not with targeted repetition. This is just my opinion, if you like targeted repetition, go for it 😄

[@pauesteve2973]

Salut i Endavant Laura...bona feina

[@CouchPolyglot]

Moltes gràcies! :)

[@Mr_Mmiya_Bhai]

You have beautiful Eyes ♥️

[@CouchPolyglot]

Thanks :)

[@Mr_Mmiya_Bhai]

@@CouchPolyglot your welcome . You are beautiful too 😍😍😍

[@jfox8888]

came across your video, read a couple of the comments. My take on this , as agreed, Wyner has too much ego and arrogance to admit its not the MOST effective for [ each distinct person, from different countries and language ] I would suggest, folks, who by chance, read my comment, to search for [ Dr Justin Sung and his Mind Chunking group mapping, related, is Dr Andrew Huberman, next is Dr Benjamin [ who commented on flash cards and anki being not so great, which i agree ] , Vinh Ging on Speech patterns etc] slowly sort through , those youtubers' channel. Learning how to learn, and to comprehend what one knows [ the rules of language] and actual conversational [ mimicry ] through mapping will sort your brain out before [ slamming repetition after repetition which doesnt do much ] Anime lovers, should know, the [ connection , of say naruto, or Bleach, certain goosebump events, made you forever remembering those words, spoken, or at least your brain can detect what is wrong in the translation for some of the recent games [ FF16, was horrible with the english subs, im no JPLT but its bad enough to wreck my brains ] ALL methods work, slightly better for others, and not much for some, its really [ as the learning coaches would put, do you comprehend and know, or are you actively using it to create and convey sentences ] And no, Anki, to me is really bad, its too fixed on a certain way of [ presenting words or sentences ], which loses , forexample some of the sentence sufixes which are required for comprehenion in its entirety. Above all, learning SHOULD be hard, as your brain is trying to [ hold, sort, group flip, remember, recall etc ], which will improve [ memory retention curve to emotional / related-to-existing-prior-knowledge ] if [ properly spaced, theme questions, not exact questions, but style/ theme [ e.g hows the day, can be asked or "brought up " in literally many combos, prime example, until now, i still remember Gato, for cat, in spanish, from his book, because, the memory technique used [ picture of a japanese cat, but gato, in ninhon means 後藤., [ i map it visually in my brain, see what else is in relation, then link and group ] [ infer and contrast ] etc... thats why we, remember things vividly in certain situations [ flight or fight, pleasure or happiness, the dopamine effect, covered by Dr Andrew Huberman ] theres to much to , just remember : its not fixed in how badly you cant recall, but rather how good you can start associating and referencing back to a [ structure ] P.s Polyglots are a different breed, as usual, on how their brain actually holds information , short term, and doing long term, they automatically start the above flow [ map, pic, group associate etc ] , without noticing, thus why genetics, for example bodybuilding dont work for god-given ones, vs us normies

[@CouchPolyglot]

Thanks for your long and elaborated message and for including so many examples. Great contribution to the discussion, thanks!! I think what makes polyglots different is that they are passion driven, so putting in the time, energy and motivation is a lot easier. And the more languages you know, the easier it gets, I guess

[@bookzdotmedia]

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