Transcript of How to learn any language in six months by Chris Lonsdale

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The people in the back, can you hear me clearly?
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OK, good.
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Have you ever held a question in mind
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for so long that it becomes part of how you think?
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Maybe even part of who you are as a person?
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Well I've had a question in my mind for many, many years
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and that is: How can you speed up learning?
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Now, this is an interesting question
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because if you speed up learning,
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you can spend less time at school.
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And if you learn really fast,
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you probably wouldn't have to go to school at all.
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Now, when I was young, school was sort of OK but...
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I found quite often that school got in the way of learning
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so I had this question in mind: How do you learn faster?
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And this began when I was very, very young,
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when I was 11 years old,
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I wrote a letter to researchers in the Soviet Union, asking about hypnopaedia,
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this is sleep-learning,
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where you get a tape recorder, you put it beside your bed
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and it turns on in the middle of the night
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when you're sleeping,
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and you're supposed to be learning from this.
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A good idea, unfortunately it doesn't work.
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But, hypnopaedia did open the doors to research in other areas
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and we've had incredible discoveries about
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learning that began with that first question.
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I went on from there to become passionate about psychology
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and I have been involved in psychology in many different ways
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for the rest of my life up until this point.
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In 1981, I took myself to China
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and I decided that I was going to be native level in Chinese inside two years.
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Now, you need to understand that in 1981, everybody thought
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Chinese was really, really difficult
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and that a Westerner could study for 10 years or more
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and never really get very good at it.
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And I also went in with a different idea
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which was: taking all of the conclusions
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from psychological research up to that point
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and applying them to the learning process.
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What was really cool was that in six months I was fluent in Mandarin Chinese
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and it took a little bit longer to get up to native.
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But I looked around and I saw all of these people from different countries
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struggling terribly with Chinese,
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I saw Chinese people struggling terribly to learn English and other languages,
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and so my question got refined down to:
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How can you help a normal adult
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learn a new language quickly, easily and effectively?
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Now this is a really, really important question in today's world.
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We have massive challenges with environment,
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we have massive challenges with social dislocation,
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with wars, all sorts of things going on
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and if we can't communicate,
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we're really going to have difficulty solving these problems.
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So we need to be able to speak each other's languages,
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this is really, really important.
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The question then is: How do you do that?
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Well, it's actually really easy.
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You look around for people who can already do it,
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you look for situations where it's already working
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and then you identify the principles and apply them.
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It's called modelling and I've been looking at language learning
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and modelling language learning for about 15 to 20 years now.
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And my conclusion, my observation from this is
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that any adult can learn a second language to fluency inside six months.
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Now when I say this, most people think I'm crazy, this is not possible.
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So let me remind everybody of the history of human progress,
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it's all about expanding our limits.
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In 1950, everybody believed that running one mile in four minutes was impossible,
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and then Roger Bannister did it in 1956
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and from there it's got shorter and shorter.
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100 years ago everybody believed that heavy stuff doesn't fly.
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Except it does and we all know this.
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How does heavy stuff fly?
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We reorganise the material using principles that we have learned
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from observing nature, birds in this case.
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And today we've gone even further...
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We've gone even further, so you can fly a car.
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You can buy one of these for a couple 100.000 US dollars.
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We now have cars in the world that fly.
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And there's a different way to fly which we've learned from squirrels.
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So all you need to do is copy what a flying squirrel does,
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build a suit called a wing suit and off you go, you can fly like a squirrel.
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Now most people, a lot of people, I wouldn't say everybody
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but a lot of people think they can't draw.
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However there are some key principles, five principles, that you can apply
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to learning to draw and you can actually learn to draw in five days.
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So, if you draw like this, you learn these principles for five days
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and apply them and after five days you can draw something like this.
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Now I know this is true because that was my first drawing
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and after five days of applying these principles that was what I was able to do.
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And I looked at this and I went:
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"Wow, so that's how I look like when I'm concentrating so intensely
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that my brain is exploding."
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So, anybody can learn to draw in five days
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and in the same way, with the same logic,
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anybody can learn a second language in six months.
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How? There are five principles and seven actions.
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There may be a few more but these are absolutely core.
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And before I get into those I just want to talk about two myths,
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I want to dispel two myths.
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The first is that you need talent.
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Let me tell you about Zoe.
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Zoe came from Australia, went to Holland, was trying to learn Dutch,
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struggling extremely, extremely... a great deal
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and finally people were saying: "You're completely useless,"
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"you're not talented," "give up," "you're a waste of time"
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and she was very, very depressed.
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And then she came across these five principles,
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she moved to Brazil and she applied them
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and in six months she was fluent in Portuguese,
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so talent doesn't matter.
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People also think that immersion in a new country is the way to learn a language.
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But look around Hong Kong, look at all the westerners
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who've been here for 10 years, who don't speak a word of Chinese.
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Look at all the Chinese living in America, Britain, Australia, Canada
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have been there 10, 20 years and they don't speak any English.
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Immersion per se does not work.
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Why? Because a drowning man cannot learn to swim.
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When you don't speak a language, you're like a baby.
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And if you drop yourself into a context
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which is all adults talking about stuff over your head, you won't learn.
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So, what are the five principles that you need to pay attention to?
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First: the four words,
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attention, meaning, relevance and memory,
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and these interconnect in very, very important ways.
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Especially when you're talking about learning.
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Come with me on a journey through a forest.
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You go on a walk through a forest
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and you see something like this... Little marks on a tree,
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maybe you pay attention, maybe you don't.
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You go another 50 metres and you see this...
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You should be paying attention.
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Another 50 metres, if you haven't been paying attention, you see this...
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And at this point, you're paying attention.
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And you've just learned that this... is important,
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it's relevant because it means this,
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and anything that is related, any information related to your survival
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is stuff that you're going to pay attention to
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and therefore you're going to remember it.
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If it's related to your personal goals,
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then you're going to pay attention to it.
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If it's relevant, you're going to remember it.
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So, the first rule, first principle for learning a language
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is focus on language content that is relevant to you.
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Which brings us to tools.
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We master tools by using tools and we learn tools the fastest
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when they are relevant to us.
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So let me share a story.
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A keyboard is a tool.
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Typing Chinese a certain way, there are methods for this. That's a tool.
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I had a colleague many years ago
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who went to night school; Tuesday night, Thursday night,
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two hours each time, practicing at home,
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she spent nine months, and she did not learn to type Chinese.
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And one night we had a crisis.
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We had 48 hours to deliver a training manual in Chinese.
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And she got the job, and I can guarantee you
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in 48 hours, she learned to type Chinese
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because it was relevant, it was meaningful, it was important,
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she was using a tool to create value.
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So the second principle for learning a language is to use your language
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as a tool to communicate right from day one.
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As a kid does.
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When I first arrived in China, I didn't speak a word of Chinese,
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and on my second week, I got to take a train ride overnight.
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I spent eight hours sitting in the dining car
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talking to one of the guards on the train,
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he took an interest in me for some reason,
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and we just chatted all night in Chinese
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and he was drawing pictures and making movements with his hands
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and facial expressions and piece by piece by piece
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I understood more and more.
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But what was really cool, was two weeks later,
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when people were talking Chinese around me,
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I was understanding some of this
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and I hadn't even made any effort to learn that.
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What had happened, I'd absorbed it that night on the train,
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which brings us to the third principle.
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When you first understand the message,
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then you will acquire the language unconsciously.
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And this is really, really well documented now,
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it's something called comprehensible input.
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There's 20 or 30 years of research on this,
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Stephen Krashen, a leader in the field,
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has published all sorts of these different studies
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and this is just from one of them.
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The purple bars show the scores on different tests for language.
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The purple people were people who had learned by grammar and formal study,
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the green ones are the ones who learned by comprehensible input.
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So, comprehension works. Comprehension is key
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and language learning is not about accumulating lots of knowledge.
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In many, many ways it's about physiological training.
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A woman I know from Taiwan did great in English at school,
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she got A grades all the way through,
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went through college, A grades, went to the US
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and found she couldn't understand what people were saying.
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And people started asking her: "Are you deaf?"
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And she was. English deaf.
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Because we have filters in our brain that filter in
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the sounds that we are familiar with
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and they filter out the sounds of languages that we're not.
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And if you can't hear it, you won't understand it,
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if you can't understand it, you're not going to learn it.
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So you actually have to be able to hear these sounds.
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And there are ways to do that but it's physiological training.
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Speaking takes muscle.
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You've got 43 muscles in your face,
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you have to coordinate those in a way
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that you make sounds that other people will understand.
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If you've ever done a new sport for a couple of days,
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and you know how your body feels? Hurts?
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If your face is hurting, you're doing it right.
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And the final principle is state. Psycho-physiological state.
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If you're sad, angry, worried, upset, you're not going to learn. Period.
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If you're happy, relaxed, in an Alpha brain state, curious,
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you're going to learn really quickly,
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and very specifically you need to be tolerant of ambiguity.
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If you're one of those people who needs to understand 100 percent
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every word you're hearing, you will go nuts,
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because you'll be incredibly upset all the time, because you're not perfect.
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If you're comfortable with getting some, not getting some,
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just paying attention to what you do understand,
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you're going to be fine, relaxed, and you'll be learning quickly.
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So based on those five principles, what are the seven actions that you take?
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Number one: Listen a lot.
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I call it brain soaking.
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You put yourself in a context
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where you're hearing tons and tons and tons of a language
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and it doesn't matter if you understand it or not.
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You're listening to the rhythms, to patterns that repeat,
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you're listening to things that stand out.
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(Chinese) Pào nǎozi.
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(English) So, just soak your brain in this.
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The second action is that you get the meaning first,
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even before you get the words.
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You go: "Well how do I do that? I don't know the words!"
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Well, you understand what these different postures mean.
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Human communication is body language in many, many ways, so much body
language.
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From body language you can understand a lot of communication,
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therefore, you're understanding, you're acquiring through comprehensible input.
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And you can also use patterns that you already know.
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If you're a Chinese speaker of Mandarin and Cantonese and you go to Vietnam,
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you will understand 60 percent of what they say to you in daily conversation,
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because Vietnamese is about 30 percent Mandarin, 30 percent Cantonese.
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The third action: Start mixing.
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You probably have never thought of this
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but if you've got 10 verbs, 10 nouns and 10 adjectives,
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you can say 1000 different things.
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Language is a creative process.
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What do babies do? OK, "me", "bath", "now".
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OK, that's how they communicate.
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So start mixing, get creative, have fun with it,
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it doesn't have to be perfect, just has to work.
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And when you're doing this, you focus on the core.
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What does that mean?
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Well, any language is high frequency content.
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In English 1000 words covers 85 percent
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of anything you're ever going to say in daily communication.
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3000 words gives you 98 percent
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of anything you're going to say in daily conversation.
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You got 3000 words, you're speaking the language.
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The rest is icing on the cake.
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And when you're just beginning with a new language,
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start with your tool box. Week number one,
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in your new language you say things like:
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"How do you say that?" "I don't understand,"
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"repeat that please," "what does that mean?"
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all in your target language.
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You're using it as a tool, making it useful to you,
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it's relevant to learn other things about the language.
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By week two, you should be saying things like:
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"me," "this," "you," "that," "give," you know, "hot,"
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simple pronouns, simple nouns, simple verbs,
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simple adjectives, communicating like a baby.
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And by the third or fourth week, you're getting into "glue words."
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"Although," "but," "therefore," these are logical transformers
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that tie bits of a language together, allowing you to make more complex meaning.
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At that point you're talking.
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And when you're doing that, you should get yourself a language parent.
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If you look at how children and parents interact,
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you'll understand what this means.
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When a child is speaking, it'll be using simple words, simple combinations,
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sometimes quite strange, sometimes very strange pronunciation,
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other people from outside the family don't understand it.
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But the parents do.
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And so the kid has a safe environment, gets confidence.
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The parents talk to the children with body language
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and with simple language they know the child understands.
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So you have a comprehensible input environment that's safe,
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we know it works; otherwise none of you would speak your mother tongue.
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So you get yourself a language parent,
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who's somebody interested in you as a person
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who will communicate with you essentially as an equal,
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but pay attention to help you understand the message.
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There are four rules of a language parent.
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Spouses are not very good at this, OK?
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But the four rules are,
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first of all, they will work hard to understand what you mean
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even when you're way off beat.
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Secondly, they will never correct your mistakes.
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Thirdly, they will feed back their understanding of what you are saying
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so that you can respond appropriately and get that feedback
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and then they will use words that you know.
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The sixth thing you have to do, is copy the face.
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You got to get the muscles working right,
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so you can sound in a way that people will understand you.
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There's a couple of things you do.
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One is that you hear how it feels, and feel how it sounds
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which means you have a feedback loop operating in your face,
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but ideally if you can look at a native speaker
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and just observe how they use their face,
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let your unconscious mind absorb the rules,
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then you're going to be able to pick it up.
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And if you can't get a native speaker to look at, you can use stuff like this...
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(Female voice) Sing, song, king, stung, hung.
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(Chris Lonsdale) And the final idea here, the final action you need to take
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is something that I call "direct connect".
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What does this mean? Well most people learning a second language
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sort of take the mother tongue words and the target words and go over them
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again and again in their mind to try and remember them. Really inefficient.
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What you need to do is realise that
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everything you know is an image inside your mind, it's feelings,
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if you talk about fire, you can smell the smoke,
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you can hear the crackling, you can see the flames,
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so what you do, is you go into that imagery and all of that memory
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and you come out with another pathway. So I call it "same box, different path".
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You come out of that pathway and you build it over time,
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you become more and more skilled at just connecting the new sounds
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to those images that you already have, into that internal representation.
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And over time you even become naturally good at that process,
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that becomes unconscious.
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So, there are five principles that you need to work with, seven actions,
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if you do any of them, you're going to improve.
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And remember these are things under your control as the learner.
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Do them all and you're going to be fluent in a second language in six months.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)