Yesterday I watched a great TEDx talk by Chris Lonsdale
He claims anybody can learn a second language in 6 months applying the following principles and actions. Here they are plus my takeways (after the “=>”) of how I can apply them to my studies.
Principles:
#1 Focus on language content that is relevant to you => I did this by going through the basic Spanish courses on Memrise that focused on vocabulary useful for introductory conversations (instead of starting with grammar books or podcasts that focus on grammar right away). Plus I did the El Menu Memrise course because I wanted to be able to order tacos.
#2 Use the new tool to communicate from Day 1 => I haven’t quite done this, but after weeks one, two, and five I made a video of me speaking in Spanish. Also, whenever I see my friends that speak Spanish I try to chat with them in Spanish for as long as I can (in the very beginning it was only a hello).
#3 Use comprehensible input – when you first understand the message (even through body language and pictures) you acquire the language => I think this indeed means I should do the Spanish only podcasts after I finish with the English-Spanish podcasts and my Spanish level has improved.
#4 Speaking takes muscle
#5 Psycho-physciological state matters – if you are sad, angry, worried you are not going to learn. If you are happy, relaxed, and can tolerate ambiguity you will learn quickly. => I’m all good in this department 🙂
1. Listen a lot (“Brain soaking”) => as much as I can 🙂
2. Understand meaning first (get clues from body language) => I’m pretty sure by now I’m doing this automatically as when I first came to United States I didn’t speak that well and it was hard to understand spoken English so I was basically forced to pay attention to the body language.
3. Start mixing (10 verbs x 10 adjectives x 10 nouns = 1000 things you can say) => not sure how practical is this advice. Don’t we do it automatically?
4. Focus on the core – use frequency lists => good, that means those Memrise courses are not a waste.
5. Get a language parent – safe environment where you can practice and make mistakes => yeah, I should probably do more studying with a tutor.
6. Copy the face of native speaker speaking => I guess its time to watch more youtube videos 🙂
7. “Direct connect” to mental images => memrise is good for that as each word has mems (pictures or sentences) that help create associations for the word.
As for Day 11 (of month 2) of learning Spanish I got in whole 2 hours! Had quite a bit of walking to do! Here is the breakdown:
11 Duolingo
64 Coffee Break Spanish episodes 49-51
36 Memrise
10 speaking Spanish with a friend
Till tomorrow!