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The text below is a slightly amended transcribed version of the clip above. With subheadings included to improve readability.

​​Hi there

Over the past few weeks, I've been looking at the myth that is is not really possible for an adult to reach native-like levels in a new language. I put forward the idea that there are four pillars that hold up this myth.  It has been my intention, over the past few weeks, to destroy each one of these myths one by one.

In the first week, I looked at translation and why excessive use of it will positively undermine your efforts to learn the language to the highest of levels. In the second week, I looked at passion and and why it is critically important that a learner gets really engaged passionate, involved in the actual learning. In the third week, last week in fact, I looked at the issue that if you go about learning language in ways that reflect that it is knowledge as opposed to skills, you're going to really undermine your efforts to learn the language. It doesn't matter whether you are learning at the lower levels or the highest levels. But, in fact, at the highest levels, it's impossible to do that.

How are you supposed to learn

This week, I'm going to look at the fourth pillar. Here the issue is that if you discount all the practices I have referred to over the past few weeks, how in fact would you go about learning a language. Well, there’s not really much out there. So, most people when they get pushed between a rock and a hard place, they'll resort to translation or going to a dictionary, doing some study or something like that.  They don't quite know what else they can do.

That's an issue especially at the highest levels. Those methods referred to before really don't work at all and will never work. At the lower levels somehow you can think they're working and they are doing something but at he higher levels they  are just obviously inappropriate. So what effect does a person do to learn a language?

Well, as I explained last week language is a skill and we sort of know at a common sense level what's involved in learning a skill. You've got to actually notice what's going on and then you've got to do something about it and start to do the thing that will sort of approximate the skills you see or need.

Practical skills compared to language skills

With practical skills, you can see what you need to do. You start at the lowest levels and you build yourself up, layer by layer as it were. As you do the things you notice the things aren't going the way you want. Then we do a bit more and somehow by adjusting, by looking, by trying, somehow we learn the skill.

Now in a skill like basketball, for example, and as I said before the principles are identical, you can actually see how the games are played ​ so you can see exactly what's going on. It's a visual thing. So, whether you you can bounce the ball or whether you can shoot the ball in the basket, it's easy to see what needs to be done.

In learning a language, it's interesting. You have to use your eyes but the eyes are not critically important. What is critically important is you're listening and listening is a much more sort of elusive kind of skill, you could say. So it's really up to us whether we hear it or we don't hear it. It's the same in basketball. Whether you see it or you don't see it. In language it is whether you hear it or you don't hear it. That's the fundamental reality that  basically underlies all language learning, in terms of the speaking of the language.

In any language there are different elements to listen to. There are, for example,  the individual sounds, the phonemes, as we call them. In English we got something like 44 sounds (phonemes). Then there's the actual stress in a word.  Like when you say “about”. The second syllable is stressed, not the first. So you have to learn to listen to where the stresses are. Then you've got to learn to listen to how words get combined.  
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Then you've got to listen to the intonation, the tones going up and down. Then the rhythm of the sentence.

So each of these is an element to listen to and to master.  On top of all that, that's only the sound we're talking about right? There's also the meaning and with meaning there's all different levels of meaning so there's a lot to listen to!  It's easy to get bamboozled, easy to get confused, easy to get distracted, easy to get stuck on one aspect of the listening and not focus on other elements of the listening.

Of course we all did it in our first language and there are many people of course who master a second language to the highest native-like levels, so it's well within our capacity.  But, there are issues that are more sort of subtle because you can't really see so readily what you're doing. You have to hear it and it's a little bit more complicated because as I mentioned before there are all these different elements to listen to.  One has to learn to focus on them and if you don't focus on these elements one at a time and you won’t develop the skills in what you don’t focus on.

It's going to be difficult to put it all together and the top of all that you got all the other distractions that we've talked about before. Some people think you should be learning in a certain way, you should try to memorize this or then there's also the issues that relate to our own personal character. You know, we can start get worried about things sometimes when things don’t go the way we want. Or, we can get worried about making mistakes and looking foolish. So, there are lots of elements that can get in the way of of the listening that we have to do and we can easily get distracted from it.

Perception, listening and awareness are keys

To learn a language to the highest levels, it's necessary to focus all our attention on our listening, on our perception and our understanding, and learn to control the elements we can control, one at a time.

If you haven't been doing this in a conscious way and you just sort of doing it in a sense unconsciously because it's just something you do without really knowing what's going on. Then it's much harder to start to get it under control. Now, of course there is no issue with that. But it takes a bit of self training or training to learn to sort it out in a much more methodical way.  

It is necessary to focus on the elements that are not working for you.  So, I’ll give I'll talk about one example of a way of using noticing in our listening with you could say natural learning skills. When we have something that we don't understand or we can’t sort of follow, our brain tries to make sense of it and one of the ways that the brain tries to make sense of it is to see patterns or to hear patterns. This is one way of learning that unfortunately in formal language learning t here’s virtually nothing done about it. 

​But a step has been missed out and it actually throws you, the learner, off. That's what happens.  The grammatical rules are an intellectual abstraction don’t really easily relate to our perception and to our abilities.  Patterns however are intimately related to our awareness, to our listening, to our perception. So,that’s what I suggest  you do if you want to start to improve how you're going about learning - start looking for patterns.

Patterns are evident in all aspects of language. In numbers, there are very very strong patterns that you can start noticing in terms of how we put the numbers together. So, for example, we have 13 then we got 30 40 50 60 70 and so forth. These were established long ago, obviously from when the language was put together.

We can also see the patterns in the sounds we say. There are  patterns in the ways we write. There are patterns in every aspect of language. Patterns are an efficient way of making sense of the things we're trying to say or how we see reality. So these patterns are something that you can start looking for.  There are patterns everywhere. By doing this you will start to heighten your awareness, to heighten your sense of noticing, heighten your sense of of activity and engagement and that's what learning is all about.

Improving your learning is all about becoming more perceptive. By listening better, seeing more, hearing more and by looking for patterns, you're exercising necessary language learning skills. That's why looking for patterns are a great way to help you actually push your language up and push it in so many different ways. There's a lot more that can be said about this particular issue.  

For now, I hope you got a sense that by changing the way you're learning language, it will actually change the results you get.

So, I hope that this kind of expose I have conducted about this myth has tickled some of you brain cells, tickled some of your thoughts so you're now going to approach learning a language with a whole new attitude and a whole new approach.  And you start to get really excited about the fact that yes, you can approach and yes, you can achieve native-like like levels in English or any other language you're learning.

So that's it for me now. So thank you so much for listening.

It's been Andrew Weiler here.

The text below is a slightly amended transcribed version of the clip above. With subheadings included to improve readability.

​Hi there.

Introduction

This is the fourth in the series of videos where I have been looking at the myth of why most people consider that it is not possible for an adult to learn a second language to native-like proficiency. There are four legs that hold up this myth.

The first ​one I looked at was translation and why excessive use of it actually undermines the ability to learn a new language and especially to get to the higher levels.

The second ​factor I talked about in the following week was about the issue of passion and why without having a real passion in the learning that you're doing, achieving these levels is not really possible.

Anyway, if you want to listen more into more depth about th​ese factors and the myth itself, just ​click on the links above.

Language is not Knowledge

So, what I want to talk about today is the third ​ factor and this is to do with the fact that even though we understand that language is a skill, in fact, most practices that people ​use and ​they've been taught at school right through school and University is all about seeing language as knowledge.

This is such an important factor that it really deserves its own spot really and we needs to be looked at very, very carefully because it's easy to skim past and say “Oh, yeah, yeah, I know that.”  But the the implications of fully understanding what is a skill and what you have to do to actually learn languages as a skill is something that has not really fully permeated into our learning and teaching cultures.

​You may be wondering about what I actually mean here. So I'll give you a few examples. The first one is memorization. Now, I suspect that most language learners learning any language would have used this practice. Basically, how this works is you take a piece of language, like a word or a phrase or maybe a grammar rule.  Then you try to commit it to memory. I'm sure you all know of memorization is. This practice rests on the notion that language is a piece of knowledge that you can memorize, that you can take and put  it into your brain and then use later as a skill.
   
Now, I ask you, in what practical skill can you think of where we do this. I mention practical skills here because they are the best ones to talk about because it's easy to see the parallels, and the principles are identical. So, in what practical skill, for example, cooking, basketball, weaving, piano playing or whatever has anybody sat down and worked at memorizing some aspect of it.

What guitar player will try to memorize the chords? "This is how I hold my fingers and I've got to memorize it." They don't do that. What they do do is they do the thing. They play the chords and playing the chords is a physical skill. It goes into a kind of memory without a doubt, but it's not memorization. Basically by doing it you learn these things and that that's the critical difference between memorization and learning something through doing it.

Another example is repetition. You may repeat something because you want to memorize it.  Now again, a basketball player will repeat shooting baskets, time and time again. But the difference is that they're trying to achieve something and they see by doing it, whether they've achieved it or not. By doing that, they then adjust what they did for the next time and try to make it a little bit better. So, everything is based on what you can do. It is not based on some bit of memory that you're trying to put it in your brain somehow.

Language is a Skill

As language is a skill, you can't access these random bits of information stored in the brain. It's why people get stuck, because you're trying to access these random bits of memory with no connection to anything else. They just planted them in the brain. They are just sitting there and of course when you try to speak or try to use the language, these bits don't jump back.

This is one of the reasons why so many people say, “I’ve learned all these words. I've learnt all this I learnt all that but I can't seem to be able to use it.” Fundamentally, the reason for that is because they learned it the wrong way.

So, another example of ways skill is not being used is how many people go and study the grammar rules. They go through a book, look at the grammar rules and try to understand it and then you do some exercises on it. All of this again is to do with kind of memory. It's a little bit different because what they do is also based on understanding.  But understanding is not a skill. Sorry, understanding is a skill. But understanding of itself is not a language skill. And it is language skills we are talking about here.

So that's why when you even though, for example, you know a grammar rule and then you can do all these exercises on it, it doesn't actually mean you're going to be able to use it when you need it. This is because you've learned something not as a skill, you've learned it as a piece of knowledge and understanding that you put into your brain, in a different part of the brain to where it needs to be for its use.  

There are some people who can take all this, what they've been taught in school or how they've learnt it in this way and transform it back into a skill. Now what these people do is if they've actually unconsciously worked out a process of transforming what they have learned this way into a skill. Because no one ever gets taught this, most people never work it out and as a consequence most of them get stuck.

Now, the interesting thing is that even the ones who get to a high level through doing this process will never achieve native-like levels. This is because it requires something else at the higher levels then doing this. The skill development they need to have mastered. they haven't actually completely mastered.

Psychological Impacts

Another big problem that comes out of learning language as knowledge that by working at language in this way, they actually end up feeling disempowered by the whole process and losing what passion they had. This is because the person who is learning knows that.  “I've done all this work and still I can't speak well”.

What this does is it basically cuts your legs off as it were. It actually disempowers you, it takes away your passion, it takes away your gut urge to learn the language because you feel, “I can't do it. There's something wrong with me. I haven't got the genes. I haven't let you know that aptitude.” Well, you do have it. It's just that you've been going about it in the wrong way and that's why you've got stuck. So, by now you may be wondering. Well, what can I do? If I don't do all these things well,

The Alternatives

You know obviously, in such a short time as we have here, I can't go into the nuts and bolts of it.  What I can do is to talk about a few fundamental principles. The first one is that skills are built from the bottom up. So with any skills you can think about, it's like a layering of skill levels. You can't get to the higher levels without properly mastering the lower ones.

Make sure that whenever you learn something you build on what you can already do, not on what you know. This is because when you start building on things that you know but don't don you're actually creating new problems for yourself. It's going to lead you down paths you don't want to be on. So, always come back to this whole notion of, “What can I actually do? What can I actually say properly or fluently or confidently?” And then build on that. If you stick to this, that one principle, that will get you a long way.

Also, as you go up to the higher levels and you want to widen and deepen your your language skills, make sure that you're building them on a firm structure. If you go about deepening and widening your language skills, and there are faulty layers of skills underneath, basically, what that's going to do is create some problems. It is going to embed the problems even deeper and they will be more difficult to unpack.

You can certainly fix the skills at any stage. But the higher you go, you have to go deeper and deeper to fix these issues up.

Another important thing in working with language is a skill is that it is up to you really to start to notice where you're struggling. Where are the problems, where are the issues you have? And so this whole focus now has to be of raising your awareness, of becoming more sensitive to things, of becoming more perceptive, about what's going on with your language and how people react to you and how you sound compared to others. So the things you notice becomes food for you. It will tell you what you need to do next. Rather than go to a book and think, what do I need to learn? Focus on what you are not doing, ore on what you need to do, and then work on that skill.

That brings me to another key point. That is it is really important to notice, to learn to notice you're making improvements. So, for example, I'm working on this particular language bit of language.  For example, the articles.

“Before, I really was not doing them that well and now I'm doing them better and better all the time. I'm getting a better and better understanding of how they work and actually am using them at the right point in time.”

If you can notice that, it will give you confidence in yourself and it will give you some feeling for yourself about “I can do this!” Your skills will start rising.  So, noticing what's going wrong and noticing what you've done and noticing how you've improved is critical when you go onto the path of improving your language as a skill.

Of course, there's a lot more that can be said here but I hope you now have a sense of why this particular leg of this myth ( the one which says that language can be learned like knowledge), the third one, is such an important one. One that has to be chopped down. Why it has to be gotten rid of from your arsenal of learning. Because, if you don’t, it will keep undermining you. It'll keep giving you problems down the road forever more as long as you keep learning language in that way.

I do I hope this talk has been a value to you and I look forward to talking to you again next week about the fourth and final leg of what's been holding up this myth. Thank you for listening.

It's been Andrew Weiler here.

​The text below is a slightly edited version of the video clip.

​Hi there.

Today. I would like to talk about the second factor that contributes to the prevailing myth that achieving native life levels in a second language is just too difficult. As I've been explaining over the past few weeks, it certainly is within the capacity of each person to achieve these levels.

Last week I talked about the first main reason and that was to do with the fact that translation is so prevalent and overused in the learning of languages. If you want to hear more about that just go to th​is video clip.

​So, today I want to talk about the second reason and that is to do with understanding, knowing and actually living the experience that the only way to be truly successful in any skill is to be passionate about it.  In the same way as people throw themselves into sports, music and computer games. When these people throw themselves into it and actually get passionate about it, it's difficult to drag them away from what they are doing. I'm sure you have come across people like that and you may be a person like this yourself, in some particular skill you've been learning.

​​People learning languages struggle a lot, typically. Of course, there are the few that don't but they're really the few because they have figured out what they need to do to actually master the skill and that's what they go about doing. Of course ,in life you can go about and study things and actually somehow improve your skill at it. But for the most part, study only adds to knowledge. Skill is all about doing something. It's all about doing. It's not about knowing. Knowing comes from the doing, fundamentally it’s all about doing the thing and learning from that.

Just think of yourself. What skills have you learned without being fully engrossed in? Whether it be a sport, cooking or dancing or anything else in life. There are many, many skills, but the physical, practical skills are the best ones to look at in terms of looking for the principles of what actually works. Of course, there are all kinds of skills, like communication skills and emotional skills and so forth and so on. However, I want to ignore that for the time being because the principles are bit harder to extract for us, in the short time that we have here.

So, just think of children that when they learn the skills they do when they are young, they throw themselves into it. Now, of course what happens and we've all seen it, is that that parental pressure can be such that kids are encouraged, dare I say, even forced to go and learn an instrument or go and play a sport or do something else like that.

I'm sure we've all seen examples where these students have not really done much with that particular skill. They've maybe learned the piano or learned the guitar or able to play soccer or tennis or something. They may well have learned it but never really achieved any great level or any great skill. They've been sort of okay, but the ones who actually excel at it are the ones who have moved from feeling the parental pressure to having something caught their imagination. That has caught them somehow.

And they basically throw themselves into it and then transform themselves in the skills. Then they start excelling in it, The same thing can happen when we can start doing some kind of skill at a young age because of peer pressure.  As our mates are doing it, so we're going to do it too. But again the same thing happens. Mediocrity is the norm (we achieve) unless something else happens. And the something else is it captures our imagination.  It captures something within us and we want to excel at it for its own sake, not for anything else.  

We can start learning a skill because of self-induced pressure or something like, “I need to learn this skill so I can get a better job or I need to do this to learn that instrument because I think it's a good idea or I will become a better person if I learn X or something like that.”

So, all these kind of motivations are all artificial and basically in these cases the skill never gets to any great height. The ones who become really good at something are the ones who actually transform that practice. Again, into something that is core for them. They get passionate and really engaged in it and start to really do well at it.

​Learning a language is much the same. The core thing in excelling in English ( or any other language you are learning) is going from the point of thinking. “I want to improve in this because it's good for my job or I am living in the country or I'm going to get a better job, or a better life or
get a better wife ( haha) or husband or something” to basically you want to do it because it somehow captures you, it's interesting, it's engaging its enthralling, it's wonderful.

It becomes something that you want to do for its own sake not because of some ulterior motive. It's that kind of attitude that has to shift, that has to happen if somebody actually is going to take off and start to reach the native-life levels. Because to reach those native-like levels, it requires a level of engagement and a level of interest that doesn't come from artificial study or artificial working. It has to be organic. It has to be learning as you're doing the thing. Learning as you are speaking and being involved in it, so deeply, with such interest and with such wonderment that it captures you and you just want to keep improving all the time and it is just what sets you on fire. It makes you excited. It gets you up in the morning. It keeps you going all day. That's the kind of energy that will help a person to reach native-like levels.

So, unfortunately what happens is that sometimes some people get these ideas, “if I want to achieve these levels I have to do certain things”. And what I've seen with so many people I've come across who have achieved or are achieving these like levels, it's not necessarily the thing that ​they're doing. It's how you are doing it and and it's all about the person finding something in that activity and how they approach it that has them be completely engaged in what they're doing.  

A lot of the practices are traditional ones that people refer to. Imitation or translation or memorization or study actually take you away from being engaged in what you're doing and actually lead you on a path to being disengaged of not really enjoying and not really getting the results you are looking for and that's a big problem.

So, for somebody like yourself, maybe, who wants to achieve native-like levels, I encourage you to find that spark in yourself, to find that interesting thing, to find that activity whether it's watching movies or whether it's reading a book or whether it's talking to people that actually has you want to do more of it and you find that by wanting to do more and because you want to do it better, because you want it to excel at it, because it's something that you find that it's going to give you satisfaction, your skills actually improve.

That's the way improvements are going to happen.  To give you an example, for the first few years of my teaching career, I was what I would call mediocre. Some would say, maybe, even a bad teacher. I wouldn't disagree with that at all. And then, I came across some ideas and an educationalist that actually completely transformed my views and understanding of what teaching is about, what learning is all about.

Out of that experience, I got really inspired and really passionate about understanding learning and understanding teaching and becoming a better teacher. And I found myself pulled into this experience of teaching and of becoming a better and better teacher and becoming better and better at understanding what actually is involved in all aspects of teaching. That has kept me going for you know, we could say 40 years.

Nothing has stopped me since. I mean, I am still as passionate now as I was 40 years ago, and I really enjoy what I'm doing. That’s why I believe I have become, I think, a really good teacher because of that passion I have for what I'm doing.  It's the same thing for you learning a language. Once you find that you can become excellent and excel in your learning, then you can get to native-like levels. So, if you want to get to these levels, I encourage you to find ways and find the ideas and find the inspiration, find that which will enable you to make that shift.

Find ways of learning and find ways of doing things that will encourage you to keep going in that way of learning. Rather than take you back to ways of learning that really take you away from that kind of feeling, from that kind of experience.

So, I hope this discussion has helped you clarify for yourself what you can do to move towards native-like expression native-like production, native-like speaking, and hope it has also helped you to basically to take away the second leg of this myth that adults are not able to become native-like speakers in a new language.

Until next time enjoy your learning.

All the best. It’s been Andrew Weiler here.

​Last week as you might recall, I set about debunking the idea that learning a second language like English for example, or French or German to native-like levels as an adult is not really possible.

There are a number of practices that you might be doing that will prevent you from ever reaching these levels. So, today what I want to do is look at the first of four practices that I believe hold up this myth. These are like four legs of a table. So each week, I'm going to look at one of the legs and chop away one of the legs so, hopefully, by the end of the fourth week the whole myth will come tumbling down.

You will find a  slightly edited version of the video below it - just to improve how it reads. The content stays much the same.

​There are a number of practices that you might be doing that will prevent you from ever reaching these levels. So, today what I want to do is look at the first of four practices that I believe hold up this myth. These are like four legs of a table. So each week, I'm going to look at one of the legs and chop away one of the legs so, hopefully, by the end of the fourth week the whole myth will come tumbling down.

​Translation has benefits

The first one is that many have a belief translation is a necessary part of learning a new language. Everyone can see its benefits. They don't know a word or something and they look it up and bang you have it. You have the word instantly. It's instant gratification. You feel like you can relax a bit. You feel like you know the language a bit more and so it actually is very alluring, a very tempting thing to do is to translate. So, why on Earth would anybody do anything else differently ?

It seems to me that very few in fact do, so what could be so wrong with it. We’ll look at that into that shortly. But before I do, I want to you to consider a number of, what I will call, irrefutable facts and these are not false facts. 🙂 These are irrefutable. They can't be dispelled. Well, that is what I think anyway! 🙂 You can judge for yourself when you listen to them.

The facts of translation

The first one is - that every language you learn occupies a different physical place in your brain. So, for example, English might be in one area, your first language in another and then another language in a different place. I'm not sure exactly where the places are, but I have seen the brain maps and it's incontrovertible that when a person speaks one language, it lights up in that part of the brain.  There's no other lights going up anywhere else. These lights aren't real lights, of course. It is the energy that gets activated when you are speaking a particular language.

The second irrefutable fact is that when you speak in a new language that you're learning, you have no time to translate and if you are translating with your speaking, you must be speaking very very, very slowly indeed. So anybody who gets to any decent level of competency at all, will recognize that there's no time to translate.

So the second thing is to do with that is the same for listening. If you are listening to somebody, translation is possible.  However, all that will do is take you away from whatever else they're saying. So you really can't be taking the trouble to translate, going back to back with and forth in different parts of the brain at the same time as closely following what they are saying, as translation is a very slow process.

There are people who can do that, translators, However, that is their profession. They've been trained to do that but for the likes of you and me, this is not really possible.  

Now, let’s go back and look at the reasons why it is a good idea to avoid translation as much as possible. Before I look into the reasons, I will say one more thing.

Translation can be necessary

There are times when translation is necessary or advisable, even a good idea. Let's say, you go to a doctor or a lawyer or there's some kind of serious kind of situation you are involved where knowing the exact meaning is essential. Now, using translation here is a tool, not as a way of learning. I will draw a distinction here.

So when you're reading a book you don't need to translate or when you're talking to some of your friends or listening to TV. You don't need to do it, necessarily. However, in some situations you may well need to. So, don't get me wrong, it is sometimes a good idea to do it. 

Reasons to avoid translation

​But to actually say the two are completely different and ignore what we did as a child, I believe is a big mistake. There are things we should and we need to learn from that experience. Some things we did as children don’t really relate to the life of adults but there are many things that do.

​One of the issues worth looking at ​is that, as a child is learning their first language, they develop certain skills.  Particular skills that enable them to learn that language. So, they develop really good listening skills, not just listening to sounds but to meanings and to develop really good looking and perceptual skills. They learn to look at things really carefully and try to work out the meaning from what actually is going on, not just the language.

As their first language gets better and better, their ability to deduce things, to work things out, to infer things to, to guess things gets better and better as well. These are all skills. They develop these skills.  You will also need to call on these skills if you want to learn any language to high levels.  These skills can be developed from the get-go, from the beginning, or they can be redeveloped later. Whatever stage you're at, you can still work at developing these necessary skills.

I believe it's completely impossible to learn a language to any decent level, short of even a native-like level, if you don't get these skills up and to a really high level. The one way, I believe that can really help you develop these skills is to stop translating. Stop right now. Don't do it anymore. Unless you really need to. That's the one thing that I believe will help you enormously to start to activate this skills.

Now, the second reason.  It is a little bit related to the first, in fact. Let’s say you are learning English, as an example. You're developing the English muscles in your brain, right? That's what you're doing. And so everything you do has to be developing these muscles. Now, if you're actually linking this language, English, to your first language by translating, what you're doing is also setting up these connections, neural pathways as they are called. They are not developing your English muscle! You are building these pathways!

And the more you use the​se pathways, the stronger they become.  And so what happens is that even when you get to a high level, really high level, it still can feel like like you are using your first language.  I hear this time and time again from people and the only reason why that's happening is because they have established these neural pathways. So even though their English is at a really high level, these links are just jumping into use all the time. ​

This basically sets up a feeling in them that they need their first language and it actually creates a lack of confidence in themselves because they know this is not the thing to do, inwardly. And so, these neural pathways that ​are created by translating creates real barriers for evermore.

On a positive note,  I will say is that these pathways can be left to degrade. They can be left to rot away.  And the way you do that is by stopping translating. If you stop translating and stop thinking in your first language and translating into your second, they will gradually disappear. ​ If you don't use it, you lose it. To avoid all this grief in the first place, it’s a really good strategy to not put these pathways into place at all!.

Now again, sometimes you do need them, as I mentioned before. But if you use it once or twice or whenever, it’s not going to set these pathways up. You are just using the tool. It's just fine.

These are, I believe, really powerful reasons to radically reduce the translation activities that you do. 

Alternatives to translation

Now, you may be asking well, “What can I do, if I don't translate?” Well, one thing you'll find if you've been doing a lot of translation is that when you stop it, you'll feel a bit of discomfort. Discomfort is fine. You know, just as we say in English, “suck it up”. It's fine. It's something that you will soon learn to adjust to and what will happen is that you'll find that other parts of your brain, other other parts of you as a person just swing into action. You will start paying more attention, you'll be listening better and you'll be looking at things more closely. Everything starts to improve because you ​aren't using the easy go-to tool (translation).  So, other learning skills have to come into play.

So, your ability to guess, the ability to infer, your ability to deduce things will all improve. Of course, you can always ask the person you are talking to help.

One thing I will say about asking people, is that obviously you can't keep asking them all the time. But, sometimes you can ask for some critical words or issues that come up. The one thing that will help you with this is to ​resist the temptation to ask people to repeat themselves, if you do that.  

Asking somebody, “Could you please say that again?” is saying you haven't heard what they have said. Well, the reality is you probably have heard most of it and it may be that you understand most of it but there's some word or some phrase that has somehow thrown you. That has somehow stopped you.

​One suggestion is to train yourself to say something like, “I'm sorry. I am not quite sure if I got that. Were you saying blah blah blah?”. Now by doing that you're actually showing the person you're listening really attentively. And in fact you had to listen attentively if you're going to say that. This technique forces you to bring into play, to activate what you actually heard. If you get it a little bit wrong, they'll straighten you out or maybe you actually worked out exactly what they were saying.

This is a really powerful way of actually getting you to be more active in your listening and more active in getting people to help you. The people will respect you for that. If you keep asking somebody to please repeat that, please repeat that, it's not a good look. But by using an alternative strategy, such as the one I just suggested, you are actually showing people that you are really attentive and listening. They will appreciate that.

So I hope with all this, I've completely cut one leg off the table so you are a little bit less assured about believing that myth that learning a new language to native-like levels for an adult is not really possible..  

I hope that's been of use and I'll talk to you next time. It's been Andrew Weiler here.

​Here is the audio file in case you prefer to listen to it.

​

​The post below is an edited (improved) version of the video clip above.

Hi there.  Today, I want to address the question of why so many people believe that attaining native-like levels in accent or fluency or expressive ability in a second language is not really possible, if you're learning a second language as an adult.

Now there are many reasons for this and I'm only going to talk about the main ones. The reasons I am going to talk about aren't listed in order of importance. The first one I want to talk about is belief.

Put it another way, if you believe you can't do something, it means that whenever you come across a big problem, you're going to unconsciously be thinking, "Well the reason I can't solve it is because I know I don't really have the ability to do it anyway. So, why even try?" In other words, you're not going to go out of your way to go to find out an alternate solution. Or, you're not going to try to find what you can do to get past the problem. Unconsciously you tend to give up and that's fundamentally the reason why beliefs actually form an important part of the reason why the myth of not being able to attain native-like levels persists.

It is a myth and I can say it's a myth because I've seen enough examples to know that. Having worked with over a thousand language learners, I can, equally confidently, say that this reason, belief, is a powerful one. Time and time again, I have heard some version of this being uttered. " I have no talent, ability" . "I am no good at learning". "I just don't understand things like this". Then I see the results of that. 

A powerful way to work against such beliefs is to find practices that give real results! More on that another time.

Practice and Use

The second reason, which you might find surprising but I believe it's a critical one, is the issue of practice or use. I have troubles with this word “practice” in English because practice has a certain implication that what you do is artificial and you're repeating what you do. Repetition does have a function, but when it is done without conscious attention and without the view to improve, it can actually be counter productive.

Whereas, in using a skill, a lot of the time what is important is that you use the skill. So, for example, people talk about “I need to practice English.” Well, “practice” English doesn't quite get it right. I believe with some things clearly you need to do some practice, but I believe what's really important in skill development is using it. So, for example, if you're going to be practicing basketball, you are at home playing shots or you are doing other such things, right. But if you are playing games, that's not practicing, you are actually doing it. You actually are playing the game of basketball. That is the same as using English (or any other language) in real life.

You can be at home practicing certain sounds or doing certain exercises. But ultimately until you get out into the court, or out into life and actually using English, it may not amount to much really, as many of you will know. So, anyway, back to the question of this practice / use issue. You need extensive hours of using a skill like English or a language to get to the highest levels. Practice is not enough. You need a lot of use.

I will go back to the example of basketball, it's a really good analogy. Just because you're practicing basketball at home or with your mates, it doesn't mean you can go out the next day or the next week and play like Michael Jordan. You need a lot of games in between. You need extensive use.

Malcolm Gladwell, who did extensive research on this, maintains you need 10,000 hours, he says, of practice.  Practice by itself will not get you there. So, I will come back to “use”, which he includes in practice.. 10,000 hours, to me, sounds like a lot. If you work out the arithmetic of that in terms of how many hours a day, it adds up to a long time. I'm not convinced about that in terms of mastering a language, but you certainly do need a lot.

You need to not just, you know, going out and talking to somebody on the street, but you need a whole array of situations, from talking about family kind of stuff, to arguing, to talking about ideas, to talking about religion, to disagreements, negotiating and so on.

You've got to get yourself involved in all these different kinds of language experiences, Not necessarily all kinds but, you do need to have a really broad array of situations where you can actually use the language to express different kinds of thoughts, emotions, suspicions, biases and so on! That's the way to broaden and deepen your new language.

If you're not exposing yourself to these different kinds of uses, you may well end up feeling you are limited in your ability. That happens because you haven't "stress tested" your English. That can create a feeling of a lack of confidence in your language skills. The wider the variety of people you talk to and the more situations you are involved in over time, you can build belief in your abilities in and feel “I can do all this”. 

However, use or practice is not really sufficient in explaining what can go wrong. I'll give you an example. I live in Australia and here we have migrants who have lived here for many, many years. Most of them have been using English for a long long time, having well more than 10,000 hours. But many don’t sound native-like. Many, actually sound heavily accented and sometimes with severe grammatical issues. They can make themselves understood, don't get me wrong. But in terms of becoming native-life, they are a still a long way from it. They may have satisfied the need for extensive practice or use but many haven't managed to get to the highest levels. Why?

I will suggest that the reason has nothing to do with a lack of ability or some misplaced gene. It is more to do with the fact that they haven't learned how to use the time when they are using a language to actually improve it.

​Learning at the Higher Levels 
​(Compared to the Lower Levels)

This is a very different kind of learning that you have to get engaged in if you are to approach native-like.  That is the next reason, which is the third I believe. There is a difference between learning English or a language at the lower levels or learning it or improving at the higher levels.

At the lower levels, the distinctions are coarse. It's more a question of:

• Do you know it or don't you know it?
• ​Do you know the sound in question or don't you know it.
• ​Can you say this word or not?
• Can you ​express that idea?
• ​Can you speak about the past or can't you speak about the past?

At some point, you start to learn all that and may even become quite good at it. But to get to native-like levels you require more than just a bit of skill. You need to get better and better and better. At the upper levels, you need to become more and more sensitive. You're talking about becoming attentive to finer and finer gradations of meaning, or finer and finer differences in meaning or sounds. To become aware of these distinctions, you have to become more and more sensitive, and more and more perceptive.

Without doing that, it's not really possible to get to the highest of levels. The only way you can do that is to do be "learning" in the midst of talking to people, while using a language. This is a skill or an art that many people don't actually master because no one's really taught this. No one talks about or actually shows you how to keep learning while using the language.  Sometimes this happens ad hoc or accidentally, or as part of what happens to you. It just sort of seems to happen. But this is ad hoc. It means it's just accidental or random. It doesn't mean you have a system for it. Without having a system for it, it just remains a random event, which you can't really rely upon to keep improving.

That's a key reason why people get stuck because they don't really master what they have to do to become better and better and better at the upper levels. It remains an art form out of the reach of most people. It, of course, does not have to be like that.

People don't really talk about how to improve after you leave formal instruction or learning. You don't really hear it mentioned. Just something your teachers assume you will do after you have left their classes… to keep improving. Well, sorry it doesn't just happen naturally to most people.

​Passion

A part of this kind of learning at the high levels of becoming more and more sensitive and becoming aware of the finer and finer gradations of meaning requires you to have some sort of passion or interest in what you're doing

Without having that kind of passion, that kind of drive inside you that has you want to keep paying attention, that has you want to keep finding the differences and has you want to keep doing this, it's not going to happen because nothing is driving you forward. 

This passion is evident for anybody who's at the highest level of skill in any area. Whether it's a sport or whether it's business or whether it's in the arts or in fact anything in life. The people at the highest levels display this kind of passion, this kind of urgency, or this kind of feeling about what they do. It's something of a kind you can't even drag them away from it. They don't want to leave it and this comes back to that they feel inside, in their heart.  It's not in their head.

It's in their heart so they want to keep doing what they are because it's part of who they are. They enjoy it, revel in it, extract satisfaction from it. They get better and better at it. It is not just that they want to get better and better. It is deeper than that. They want to keep doing what they are, as they feel fulfilled in what they are doing,  so they can fulfill their own potential so they can feel alive. It's something deeper than just wanting to get there. The passion aspect is critical for the learning to be sustainable.

So, if you don't feel this passion, if you don't start to do something that enables his passion to show itself, to become evident so you can actually feel it, I would say it again, it's nearly impossible to get to the native-like levels because there's nothing driving you forward. So this passion is what we're talking about.

It is not just passion but it has to be also in the way you are actually learning. So, for example, if you're learning in ways that don't lend themselves to passion appearing, you are going to struggle. An example would be studying from a book. I mean, I don't know if you can get really passionate about studying in the book. I don't. Maybe you can.

​Your practices and what you do have to in fact support or ​create a passion. So​, passion and what you do have to be in sync, work together. In other words you have to develop practices and ways of learning that support your passion and that basically keep feeding you. The practices can't be divorced from the passion.

So you have to have practices that actually not just support but become a part of or generate the passion. They have to serve your passion in what you're doing, and what you're doing supports your passion as it were so it's like a loop to support each other. 

So, that's another reason that can have people give up. They may have a passion but the practice they use doesn't really support their passion. So the practices they use act to reduce their passion and then they start to give up on their learning practices. There's a whole art to finding the kind of practices that will feed your passion and having a passion that drives your practices.

The Result

From this discussion you may come to see that there are real reasons why having this idea that second language can't be fully mastered as an adult is really a myth. It's nothing more than that. It is a myth because most people just don't understand what they have to do to get to native-like levels. As a result their belief becomes perpetuating. It's supported by their practices because they're doing the wrong kinds of things.

Then they start thinking, "Of course, I can't get to the highest levels." And so the only way you can break this myth is one start believing you can and then start changing your practices and changing what you're doing. That ​may then start helping you to create this passion that you need that in turn will create your more practices that will support the passion and so forth. So it becomes like a loop. 

Anyway, I hope this little talk has been of help to you. I will talk to you more about this later on when I will start to unpack some of the elements I have been talking about.

Bye for now.

What's after language classes?

One seldom discussed question for language learners is how are they going to keep learning once they leave classes. This is really a critical question. The answer to this can help you decide on what is the best course of action in your language learning, now and in the future. Do you continue with the same kind of studying/learning you were doing in classes, or do you change something? If so, what? 

This issue is not something that many people, including teachers, concern themselves with. That is why I have said before that language classes can be "dangerous" for you. Even if we accept that classes are of great value, the inescapable conclusion reached by anyone who cares to look closely enough is that a great deal of language is learned outside of the class. In fact, it needs to be learned out of the class if you are going to keep improving to the highest levels. So preparing yourself for that would seem to make some sense.

There are endless aspects of language which can only be gained through extensive use and by continuing to learn from all the experiences one has. Full natural fluency, accent reduction, casual forms of language use, subtleties in meaning as expressed by tones, understanding and expressing innuendo, to mention only a few areas can really only be picked up while you are using the language. Native speakers are capable of expressing dozen of meanings in a phrase, such as "I love you," or even a word such as "Yes", just by varying tone and inflexion. Learning all this in formal classes or from texts is just not possible. 

However this way of learning, learning as you speak, is not what is encouraged, called upon or exercised in regular language classes. Typically in classes the primary emphasis is on instruction, making sure the learners pick up what they are taught. I have seen many language learners flummoxed and not really sure how to keep learning outside of a formal language learning environment. Hence so many language learners get stuck at a level well below what they were aiming for.

A key distinction between most language classes and a "natural" way of language learning

In classes, the teacher takes responsibility for organising the learning and finding the errors learners make, correcting them and providing answers where needed. So students are trained to look to the teacher for help in nearly all aspects of their learning. 

This emphasis lies at the heart of why language classes are notoriously unsuccessful for most people. Learners are taught to be dependent upon the teacher. This unintended outcome follows the learner long after they have left classes.

The reality is that until the learner starts to take responsibility for their own learning, learning that leads to enhanced skills and confidence comes slowly or not at all for most.

Out of classes, learners can only rely on themselves to adjust what they know and correct themselves. No one else will do that. If you have not been trained in class to do that, a whole new way of learning awaits you once you leave classes. There is a difference between learning something quite new and improving on what you already know. So many students I have seen don't get this distinction so they continue to study grammar, phrases and so on. Rather than focus on improving what they already know.

So they don't concentrate on what they need to, driven by what they see needs their attention. There seems to be in many a lack of understanding that they need to learn from what they are doing, finding instances where they need to improve. Instead, they turn to resources that may or may not address the very issues they need to work on.

Inevitably improvements will happen, but mainly in an ad hoc way. Ad hoc because there is no real appreciation of how they are learning and what they can do to take charge of it. Rather than let circumstance dictate the improvements. 

Should not classes, from day 1, be preparing language learners for the inevitable...namely that they will have to take responsibility for their own learning? Surely, there is just no other way to learn once you have left the narrow "nurturing" confines of a class than to rely upon yourself and learn as you go along. That is the way we learn and improve all skills.

People DO successfully learn languages out of classes

For some people this may be obvious, however such has been my experience teaching and learning languages that I believe it needs to be stated that we can all successfully learn languages without needing classes. Don't get me wrong, language classes can certainly add real value, of the kind that would be hard to produce outside of them. I am just making the point that there is not enough attention given to the kind of learning that happens outside of classes! People do talk about "doing" things - talking, reading and watching movies but how to learn from that experience is not really explored.

Let's consider the following observations which I believe are not contentious:

• many people learn languages later in life without ever attending a class (this was certainly the case before there were classes  or even formal grammars/dictionaries etc), 
• once people leave language classes they have no choice but to keep improving on it by themselves, 
• some people keep learning after leaving classes..and in fact flourish... whilst others don't learn much after leaving classes - many of these become despondent and end up giving up on their learning thinking they don't have what it takes,
• not many people go on to native like proficiency.

From these observations we can see that some people learn languages more effectively than others. This can happen for a variety of reasons. Here are a few of them. They typically:

• utilise effective strategies so they stay engaged in the learning and the language,
• don't have disempowering attitudes and beliefs that sabotage them, or at least work to minimise their impact,
• ensure they make the time to use the language,
• create opportunities where they can use the language,
• have a real commitment to improvement and don't give up on their goals

There are those people who keep learning languages in much the same way as they learned in class. Namely, they keep doing exercises from texts, practicing phrases, drilling themselves, and creating and memorising word lists, etc. They do this as they don't really know what else to do. This is a sad indictment on the classes they attended, which did nothing to prepare for the time outside of classes.

Alternatively, there are people who spend the bulk of their time using the language by any means possible, talking, reading , listening to the radio, eavesdropping in cafes, watching movies, writing a diary, etc. The latter way is what I would call for our purposes here, organic learning. With this way of learning, when needed you may consult the internet, a dictionary, and whatever resource you could find to help you with the learning you needed as you are progressing. This way, the more formal learning is driven by the needs you have as you use the language. You don't let the formal learning dominate your learning.

So, if you were struggling with vocabulary to describe your feelings, you may want to look up vocabulary that describes feelings. Better still watch some movies, or read some books about people going through lots of ups and downs! Of if you were struggling to express levels of certainty, you may do some research on that.  A part of that is remaining attentive to others doing the same in the new language.

Key ways that natural language learning happens and can be encouraged

If we are to employ this way of learning we need to approach it in ways that cultivate it and allow it to blossom. To aid that we need to bring or develop an attitude towards our learning so we approach it with curiosity, wonder, expectation and interest. Approaching learning this way can transform the most difficult of situations into one approaching something like a game, rather than one typified by regarding language learning as "difficult" or as something that has to be done.

Even in games we can be sometimes a bit overwhelmed. People become successful at games when they master a beginning skill to a level of confidence. In basketball for example, throwing a ball is maybe where it starts. Once we can do that to a certain level of skill, we may move on to throwing it straight or throwing it far or throwing it so it flies fast. 

Once we master some of these basic skills, we start to feel confidence in "playing" basketball. With that our attitude towards it gets transformed. Maybe then we start throwing at hoops or learn to bounce the ball (slowly first then at speed, whilst we are moving, etc ) Each skill is measured by how we feel about what we can achieve.

This comes from achieving an improvement in our skills in doing what we set out to do. Others of course will make their comment or reaction about our skills development. Ultimately though, it is our decision, built on our confidence, that will determine whether we feel good about what we doing and go on with it.

A key aspect to all this is not to place unrealistic expectations upon ourselves but to accept that improvement happens by steps. Feeling despondent because we cannot play grade basketball after playing for a few hours would be totally unrealistic.

Learning languages is the same. As we master parts of the language and can gain confidence in the use of it, our impetus to continue grows. Problems can happen when our "learning" exceeds our confidence levels. Namely we come to "know" a lot, but we can't use and have little or no confidence in what we can do with what we have learned. This happens typically when we learn language as knowledge, not as a skill. or possibly when we don't give sufficient time to using what we have learned. 

So the way we approach language learning and what we do with it IS critical. With an approach that builds skills and confidence, we can become unstoppable. With approaches that don't provide us opportunities to grow our skills AND confidence we soon become disenchanted.

So my advice is to look for ways of learning that inspire you, that motivate you and that give you heart. Together with that you need to see a growth in your confidence (confidence in your skills is the necessary outcome that tells you you are on the right path.)  I have seen language learners develop confidence in their abilities even at the low levels of the new language. I am not talking here of misplaced confidence ... but of confidence based on real skills in using the language.

Misplaced confidence can happen when there is a low level of self-awareness and you believe all is well. A remedy for this is to cultivate more self awareness and be more watchful of yourself and others. Do not think because you are being understood that all is well! 🙂 That is an important step, but it remains just that if your aim is to get to the highest levels.

Confidence can be achieved at any level of language we are talking about. Even if you are at a beginner stage of proficiency, there is no reason why you couldn't have confidence in the skills you are working on. Realising of course that outside of these limited parameters you will not and to expect otherwise is not realistic. For confidence to develop there is a:

• need for authentic language experiences (language is being used naturally - natural conversation, movies, novels etc ) is a prerequisite. 
• need to be attentive to everything in that experience. Worrying about what people might be thinking about us, thinking about what else we might be doing or about tonight takes valuable energy away from our attention. We need to be fully attentive, absorbing, taking in, processing whatever is there.
• need to move our awareness to the various aspects of the experience. Letting it stay with one area and not exploring the others is a recipe for getting stuck. By this I mean, as well as seeking meaning, we need to also focus for example, on:
  • the words that were used
    • "Are these words similar to what I would use?"
    • "Are they in the same order as I would use them"
  • the tones that were used
    • "Was there some tone used to add to the meaning of the words?"
    • "How were the tones used to add to the meaning?"
    • "Would I use the same tones to convey the meanings that were intended?"
  • the non verbal aspects of communication (face/body/gestures), all of which conveys meaning
    • "Was there something new for me here?"
    • "Is this common or just particular to this person?"
  • the environment
    • "How does the situation effect the language?" Formal situation? At home? Age of people? Do they know each other? Gender of people? etc
  • what happened before 
    • "How does the situation leading up to the language used affect what was said? Emotion? History of people? Difficulties?
  • what happened after, as a result
    • How does the language affect the result?
  • what language forms were used
    • What exact forms or structures were used?

I went to a bit of detail here to highlight just some of the factors that you can pay attention to at different times to fully appreciate the meanings, the uses and subtleties of language. Clearly a language learner can't focus on all this at the same time. However great language learners learn to pay attention and become aware of all these factors, and more, at different times so they can gain finer and finer distinctions about the language they are learning. By doing this they can then learn to improve on their skills in the use of the new language.

Some language learners come to these realisations by themselves. Others need to be actively led towards these by a teacher or possibly a coach. Finding those who can do this is not that easy, as most have not been trained in this and have not reached these understandings for themselves. They are out there, you just may need to keep looking until you find them.