7 Rules for Learning Languages, part 1

This is the first of a two part series. In this post, I'll cover the first four rules, which are more strategic directives. The second post, with the last three rules, covers the tactical concerns of how to implement the principles I talk about in this article.

Language learning is a passion of mine. It started when I was a Freshman at OU and decided to study abroad for a month during the summer of 2010. That got me hooked on both travel and Spanish. In the years since then, I've honed, distilled, and refined my language learning philosophy and methodology, which I'm going to share through 7 rules. I call them rules, but they're really more rules of thumb. To quote George Orwell, "Break any of these rules sooner than say [or do] anything outright barbarous."

Since studying abroad in Chile, I've had the wonderful opportunity to travel to nearly a dozen countries, and I've used these ideas to learn Spanish and Italian. Currently I'm applying them to learn Portuguese and especially French.

The rules are as follows, with explanations further below:

1. Find meaningful, personal motivations for learning.
2. Don't stress at the beginning about output (speaking and writing). Focus on lots of fun input.
3. Do things in your language that are fun, that you enjoy, and that are meaningful and relevant to you.
4. Surround yourself with your target language.
5. Use the technology you always have on hand to create an immersion bubble.
6. Do small bits of active output in your L2 each day.
7. Challenge yourself to use the language in contextually meaningful or real world situations.

First off, I will say that very few, if any of these ideas are original. While I have made them my own, so to speak, I had several very formative teachers (who probably don't even know I exist). Of particular importance to my development was the website All Japanese All The Time (Thank you Madi-san for introducing me to the website!). The tagline on ajatt.com is very informative: "You don't know a language, you live it. You don't learn a language, you get used to it."

1. Find meaningful, personal motivations for learning, and use them to your advantage.
   Looking back on my journey to Spanish fluency, there were two initial motivating factors. The first was a stubborn desire to prove to myself that I could do it. The second, and probably more sustainable factor, was my fateful decision to study abroad. Once I committed to a month-long summer program in Vinia del Mar, Chile, I felt compelled to learn as much Spanish as I could to make the trip worthwhile. When I procrastinated studying for my classes, I did things to improve my Spanish instead. This culminated during finals week, when instead of studying I spent all my free time watching the hundred or so episodes of a Chilean telenovela called "Martin Rivas: Adventures of a Dreamer". This payed off when I arrived in Chile and it turned out my host-mom loved the show as well.
   
   I'll also point out that in this example, the motivation gradually shifted from external (the prospect and reward of a trip abroad) to internal (I started enjoying doing things in Spanish, like watching the telenovela). In fact, when I later become hopelessly addicted to the Spanish folk metal band Mago de Oz, I "learned" Spanish as a wonderful but unintended consequence of singing along, looking up lyrics, and straining to piece together the meaning of what they were saying. I wasn't doing it to learn Spanish but because I enjoyed it, creating a positive feedback loop. The more I understood, the more I enjoyed what I was doing and the more likely I was to continue the activity.
   
   If you're learning a language, I encourage you to think about why you're passionate about the language you want to learn and how you can use that to design your own success in that language. For example, I started learning French a couple of months ago. I have wonderful French friends that unknowingly instilled in me a desire to learn their tongue. I'd also love to read French philosophers untranslated.
   
   If you're not passionate about the language you're learning, you should take an afternoon to reflect on if it's wise for you to continue as you are. Insofar as language and identity are intrinsically linked- which I'd say they are- learning a language well- to a point of fluency, let's say- means creating a new identity in that language. If you don't love something about the language or its corresponding culture, how will you ever let yourself become it?
   
   On that note, learning a language because it's useful is potentially the worst reason to learn one. You'll bore yourself to the brink of suicide. Indeed, by taking this utilitarian approach you're essentially aborting your inner L2 infant (Your L2 is your target second language).
   
   
2. Don't stress at the beginning about output (speaking and writing). Focus on lots of fun input.
   In fact, at the very beginning, I'd say not to try to produce any output at all. You'll just stress yourself out, get self conscious, and lock in poor pronunciation.
   
   The exception to the stricter zero-output-at-the-beginning corollary is if you're already in situations where you need to use your L2, like if you're already abroad. In that case, have fun with it. Revel in being a beginner, and allow yourself to make mistakes. Explain your lack of experience to the people you meet and invite them along on your language journey as accomplices.
   
   The prime directive at the beginning is to focus on input that you enjoy. The faster you find things you enjoy, the faster you can start creating a positive feedback loop like I described in rule 1, where you're picking up the language without even thinking about it because you're having fun.
   
   If you're worried about not understanding anything, think of ways to circumvent comprehension. Watch your favorite movies dubbed in your L2, so you already know what's happening. Watch TV and movies meant for kids. Watch action movies where understanding the dialogue is less important than enjoying the eye candy. But always, always, always follow rule 3:
   
   
3. Do things in your language that are fun, that you enjoy, and that are meaningful and relevant to you.
   And do as much of them as possible. Yes, I said this in the previous rule, but it's important enough to repeat. It's also probably the most important rule. When you're having fun, you're not learning. That's just a happy side effect. After you start getting into what you're doing, the awareness that whatever you're doing is in your L2 fades away and you are just in the moment, enjoying yourself.
   
   Reading, consuming news, journaling, watching movies or your favorite TV shows, listening to music, connecting with friends, learning about or participating in a hobby, listening to audiobooks, surfing the web, reading magazines are all things that you can do in your L2 whether you're in your native land or abroad. Obviously, your options go up as you build proficiency, but as I mentioned previously there are always things you can do that are both enjoyable and circumvent a lack of experience and exposure to a language.
   
   Conversely, don't do anything you don't enjoy, that isn't fun, or that you don't find meaningful or relevant. It'll kill your passion for the language and you probably won't learn very well anyway.
   
   In case you're wondering, this excludes studying grammar, writing conjugation tables, and memorizing contextually-orphaned vocabulary. Our template for language instruction that emphasizes these activities over the use of the living language is a holdover from the yonder years when the only foreign languages that universities cared about were ancient Greek and Latin. How do you learn dead languages? By stitching their decomposing bits and pieces (grammar, vocabulary, parts of speech) together to try and reconstruct a living organism, like some kind of linguistic Frankenstein. Why would we learn living languages the same way? It's the equivalent of vivisection, a rightly abhorred practice.
   
   There's maybe a time and place for studying grammar. Maybe when you're already fluent. After all, you didn't study grammar in your native tongue until you already spoke it, and even then it likely didn't improve your writing or speaking. Input has to procede output, in whatever language. Garbage in, garbage out, as the old programming saying goes. To speak well, you've got to listen, a lot, to people who speak well. To write well, you've got to read lots of good writers. And learning grammar in a language is meaningless unless you already have a functioning mental model of the language in your head.
   
   
4. Surround yourself with your target language.
   Use anything enough and the act of using it becomes second nature. It becomes a habit. To become a habit, you have to do the thing regularly. The more enjoyable the activity is, the more you'll do it and the faster you'll internalize the habit. This holds true for languages. If you put your L1 (native language) habits on hold, and replaced them with L2 habits, then I'd reckon you'd either already be considered fluent or are well on your way.
   
   I'd also reckon that language fluency is really just a fancy way of saying exactly that: that you've built habits in that language. I'm fluent in English because, for the past 23 years, I have had English forced upon me. For 23 years, I've had to not only constantly listen to those around me jabber in English, I've also spoken it myself nearly every day. I'm constantly surrounded by the English written word as well. For the most part, I didn't have a choice in the matter. I didn't choose to be born in the United States (though I'm glad I was!). As a mewling newborn, I had to learn English to interact with the world and communicate with those around me.
   
   My point is, that's the situation we want to be in as language learners. Think of developing L2 language habits as a way of rewiring your brain to function in your L2. You're essentially saying to your brain, "You might as well start soaking this stuff in because it's not going anywhere."
   
   When I talk about language habits, I'm referring to patterns of behavior that, when done in an L2, help create an immersive language bubble around you. One that I'm trying to develop to help me learn French, for example, is to have a French radio station streaming while I'm at my computer working. I've also try and watch any movies I want to see in French. If I regularly read certain magazines, I might switch my subscription to a French e-zine version instead. The idea is to do these (enjoyable) things regularly enough so as to create a situation similar to the one when you were a baby learning your L1: your brain starts soaking everything in and, bit by bit, you start understanding. Don't accept the tripe about "losing your language learning capacity when you're 5 years old/7 years old/13 years old [or whatever magic age happens to be in vogue currently]".
   
   Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do." Form patterns of behavior in your L2 as described above, and those patterns, like mountain springs, will run down to the deep lakes of your subconscious. Our actions, repeated ad infinitum, shape who we are and how we think in ways that we've always suspected, as Aristotle's quote shows, bu are only just now beginning to understand.
   
   At the Conscious Life Workshop last August, we learned about priming and neuroplasticity. Basically, researchers are finding that our brains physiologically change according to the input they receive. So "fake it until you make it" is neurologically sound advice- your brain picks up on your new repeated behaviors and rewires your brain so that your psyche mirrors your external behavior. You're brain is reshaping itself to bring your internal model of reality in line with the new stimuli it's receiving. Different stimuli prime our brain in different ways. An empty pantry or low quality, flimsy appliances might prime our brains for scarcity. Professional equipment primes us to be and act professionally in our work. This is why when you dress well, you perform better on tests. The point here is that we can use this to our advantage to achieve desired change.
   
   Creating language habits or patterns then is a kind of neurological priming. In my case, my brain is receiving consistent French inputs over a long period of time, and based on what we know of neuroplasticity, my brain actually physiologically changes its structure in response. My brain is creating what I think of as a French identity, slowing building an internal (French) model of reality that can make sense of my new external (French) reality. To my old English-speaking self, this input is nonsense and gibberish. But my nascent French-speaking self is gradually unlocking the ability to make sense of it all. I'm not learning the language; I'm becoming the kind of person that can understand the language. Learning a new language is then an act of personal re-creation.
   

Stay tuned for the second part, where I dive into how to implement these rules.