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> Evening learning probably isn’t ideal for teenagers either. In a study published in 2012, Johannes Holz at the University of Freiberg, and colleagues, found that 16- and 17-year-old girls performed better on tests of factual memory if they’d learned the material at 3pm than at 9pm.
> However, another study, published in Psychological Science in 2016, suggests that evening learning can be beneficial – especially if you follow it with a decent night’s sleep, and a follow-up session the next morning.
In other words, we have directly conflicting results, because this is all a bunch of p-hacked complete fucking bullshit.
Also why bother with microoptimizations? Just sound like easy ways to justify excuses — “Welp my 3pm window passed, maybe tomorrow!” The best method is the one you actually do.
Well, you're discounting this entire article based on one point out of five. It's useful information, regardless. And they are upfront about it. So I don't particularly understand the problem, and calling it "complete fucking bullshit" seems a bit overboard, to me.
The follow-up feature is critical to why that 2nd study might have found different results. The delay-review step is very important for cementing learning. So no, its not all bs when different protocols have seemingly opposite results. Its not some simple question that can be answered glibly in one sentence.
Or those to experiments simply measure completely different things.
One is time of day, the other is review + good sleep.
This pessimistic comment made me link directly to the article, instead of linking to HN as I usually do, when I now sent the article to someone looking to learn a new langauge.
Exactly. The only somewhat sensible advice in the article is not to focus on grammar.
My feeling is that you need an incredible amount of repetition. I never really learned Spanish well until I took immersion classes in Guatemala then continued on backpacking through South America for several months. A decade later I still struggle to retain what I learned.
I’ve built many language learning Android and iPhone apps over the years. I still don’t have a great formula but I think my latest iPhone apps are simple and focused enough to help get people started.
Hundred Words: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hundred-words/id1469449237
Language Pairs: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/language-pairs/id1438817614?...
Pictures and Words: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pictures-and-words/id1459560...
Word Search: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4labs-word-search/id1311744...
There is a learning method called Spaced Repetition, which involves repeatedly quizzing yourself, with a decreasing frequency as you learn them. So, if you always know the word for dog, you'll get that one less frequently than the one for cat that you have more trouble remembering.
My feeling on learning a language is that you break down a language barrier to find an even more difficult cultural barrier.
it's not just repetition, it's use in context. I learned both spanish and english that way, and I did it extremely quickly. Whenever you encounter a new word, work it in a sentence, then use it with someone else in a real situation. I guarantee your gains are going to be measurable day by day.
I learned how to turn a stream of nonsense (from my perspective) into words by listening to hundreds of hours of Spanish TV that I didn't understand. Spanish audio + Spanish subtitles (to figure out how to parse sound, and to map sound to writing), and then Spanish audio only (prevent reliance on reading). Surprisingly effective. Incomprehensible input appears to be quite valuable.
At some point I'll try applying my methods to learning a different language to see if I can generalize (for me and my ability to pick up a language, at least).
Just bear in mind that there's a huge difference between being able to get the gist of something spoken in a foreign language and being able to convey your thoughts effectively in that language. Even after man-years of study I still sound like an idiot when trying to speak English in conference calls, even though I can understand nearly 100% of written and spoken English.
Yeah, language is all about input. I'm learning Spanish now and it's going super fast. it's the second foreign language I've tried to learn (which I think helps, especially as they both have conjugated verbs, which is not really a thing in English), and it is much easier than the first (definitely helps).
Anyway, my method is:
0. Learn the grammar rules but don't fixate, just enough to get oriented. Occasionally review them.
1. I listened to this person who said something in Spanish then the same thing in (this case) the first foreign language I leanred, and does this over and over, occasionally adding new elements with an explanation, but mostly just brute-force repetition.
2. After a few hours of this (which is pretty boring), started watching 'Easy Spanish' videos on youtube, where they ask people questions on the street and have subs in Spanish and English. Watch these on repeat.
3. Start watching other Spanish youtubers who speak in that youtube manner (where everything is EXCITING!) - I have been watching Luisito Communica (or something like that, my Spanish is still bad).
4. (This is mostly how I learned my first language - Russian) - Listen to podcasts, but read the transcription first. For Spanish i am using radio Ambulente
5. Listen to full albums on youtube and follow along with the lyrics on genius.
I hope that soon I can just watch movies and stuff in Spanish without subs. Once you can get to the point where you can do that it's not even work to get better.
This is my experience in learning Japanese. At first, it was kind of an accident haha but you sort of link the general meaning of things after months worth of content. For me though, there was definitely an upper limit (not to mention this does very little for learning how to speak--at least in my experience) and because of that I've started on more concrete methods of learning.
I also feel the process has given me a kind of a boost in my studies as certain words and phrases have already been ingrained into memory.
I still do consume audio/video content primarily in Japanese (mainly because that's what I'm interested in--which definitely helps the learning process) and it's gotten easier and easier to listen/watch without subtitles lately.
Well that's pretty much how you learned your first language already! You didn't even need subtitles.
My technique was to pick a TV show that I basically knew all the lines to (Friends, in this case), and then watch it in Spanish with Spanish language subtitles.
This way I already know what the English meaning is, and I can also map the sounds to the written script.
"German volunteers learning Dutch who’d drunk enough vodka to achieve a blood alcohol level of 0.04 per cent (approximately equivalent to just under a pint of beer for a 70kg male) were rated by independent Dutch speakers as speaking the language more proficiently during a short-test"
Based on my limited exposure to Dutch, this sounds about right; drunken German.
Edit: "Als vliegen achter vliegen vliegen, vliegen vliegen vliegensvlug."
We generally say if you shout Dutch it sounds German (especially if you do it in a certain way). So I guess the reverse also holds true somewhat. Though I think in general people who've had a drink or two speak more 'fluently' in foreign languages. Mostly because they don't think too much about what they're trying to say.
Also translation: "If flies fly behind flies, flies fly flight speed" (in general the translation for vliegensvlug is 'as fast as lightning' which isn't really accurate and I suppose a better translation is "a bird's flight(speed)" than lightning)
This is true of all languages. The biggest barrier to learning a language is fear of embarrassment.
This has probably to do with the inhibition factor that many but not all learners of a foreign language have.
No, "Als achter vliegen vliegen vliegen, vliegen vliegen vliegensvlug."
At least for Christians a good way to learn a foreign language is to read the Bible in that language, because
(1) they are probably used to read a chapter or two on a daily basis (thus, the routine is already there),
(2) and they probably remember some passages in their native tongue (thus, already having a translation of the text).
This helped me. YMMV.
This is good advice, but
> they are probably used to read a chapter or two on a daily basis
This sounds mental. Reading the Bible on a daily basis? I’m pretty sure that this is not the norm for the vast majority of (devout) Christians (at least in Western/Central Europe).
Using the bible is... contentious I'd say because there's a lot of differences between even English translations. I mean I guess the gist of it and the stories are roughly the same but it's definitely not a 1:1 translation between languages.
This also helped me learn Chinese, along with translated worship music.
For English speakers learning Chinese:
https://pingtype.github.io/bible.html#_home
For Chinese speakers learning English:
https://pingtype.github.io/bibleEnglish.html#_home
Songs:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwKrKHi_rqtAjt0eIvhEB...
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwKrKHi_rqtBNfDESXQuk...
I just recently started learning Swahili and found some amazing classes from Language Transfer[0]. (I have no connection with them.) I've spent a lot of time learning languages, including tricky ones like Mandarin, and this is by far the best learning method I have ever come across.
The "class" takes the form of a dialogue between teacher and student where the student is an actual learner unfamiliar with the language and you try to learn with them. Each new word is introduced with a short but thorough explanation of how it fits in with everything you have learned so far and sometimes a mnemonic or story to help with recall. You are always prompted to try and construct new sentences yourself with the new words, without being told how, so that you are naturally exploring the grammar and idiomatic structure of the language and building an intuition for it. You are also prompted intermittently to recall previously learned words.
Within just an hour or so, I felt comfortable creating many sentences. I think this style of teaching helps build confidence in the language quickly, which is really important for making progress. They only ask for donations for their content and all of it is on soundcloud and youtube. I really recommend trying it out.
Immersion still remains the best method. I've tried a plethora of approaches to learn German (not the easiest or most fancy and I swear I'm not masochist) and it's not working. The biggest progress I made came when I was forced to speak it with my gym buddy because that was our common denominator. That said, if you want to learn German, avoid Berlin. Everyone will meet you with English.
Someone should edit the title to say "... at a new foreign language"
This is a usual bunch of crap thrown together to make another clickbait list for your new tab recommendations feed. In reality, there are numerous ways and tips to improve your language learning process, but there is no single magic one. Some of them will work for you, some will not but you have to figure that out yourself by trial and error. And this process by itself will likely bring a huge benefit.
I strongly recommend watching the video "Ten things polyglots do differently" [1] to get the elaboration of the above. Basically it boils down to this: successful language learners use quite a few methods and techniques. But each learner uses different ones. The main thing they all have in common is that they are actively engaging in the process, not just following some guides and doing tasks from a textbook. A language is not something you can be taught, it's something you need to take yourself. Everything else is far less significant.
"Don't pay too much attention to grammar."
Breaking that rule is one of the ways my high school failed to teach much German to most of its students.
As a kid I would watch english-spoken news without having any understanding of English. Then all of a sudden one day I started understanding the news anchors. It was a weird experience. Shortly after I started on a lessons book and that got me to basic english - enough to understand a tiny bit to get into an American school, but not enough to actually communicate.
>German volunteers learning Dutch who’d drunk enough vodka...were rated by independent Dutch speakers as speaking the language more proficiently during a short-test
I have no horse in this race, but this is brilliant.
(Though they seem to have missed out on an opportunity to determine which alcoholic beverage works best for each language.)
Ok, so the first picture is a lady holding a GIANT glass of wine. Does this mean that the best way to learn a language is to get drunk while doing it?
For those who don't drink wine, that glass probably has about two "servings" and will give anyone who drinks it a small buzz. Large wine glasses like this aren't meant to be filled up, they're meant to help the drinker really swirl the wine. It brings oxygen into the wine which helps release the flavor.
Edit: The amount of alcohol that the lady in the picture is drinking is more than what the article recommends.
This talk by Chris Lonsdale gives some practical advice on learning new languages fast. Most of it is along the lines of what the article says, but seems to say that the key part is to get a "language parent", whom you can have conversations with and will try to understand and reply to you, no matter what (like parents do with small children):
Re: alcohol - in my experience, it depends. For the first year or two of learning German, a beer or glass of wine helped me relax and speak more effortlessly, as suggested. But now, as a fluent speaker -- I've passed a C2 exam, i.e. "mastery" on the CEFR scale, with a good score -- I definitely notice that any amount of alcohol hurts more than it helps. In the same way that any amount of alcohol makes my English worse: I have trouble with recall of even basic words.
That's how I managed to learn spanish: immersion. To watch movies, series, music, jokes, websites, everything in spanish, with my Google Translator buddy by my side.
I speak Spanish fluently as a second language.
> Listen to the language, even if you don’t have a clue what’s being said – and you’re not even paying close attention
I totally agree that this is helpful. Playing Spanish music while I work was one of the things I credited helping me learn so quickly.
> Don’t try too hard with the grammar
This, too. When I first started learning, I tried to remember all of the rules that I was taught in high school, but it was easier to just remember how the words are used in different contexts. Asking native speakers the whys behind the languages usually just results in frustration.
> Have a drink…
My verbal fluidity increases significantly when drinking. This probably has to do with letting go of the worry about sounding "dumb" while conversing in a different language. Most people are very forgiving towards people speaking in their non-native tongue, but it's still hard not being self-conscious. Alcohol helps.
I don't know about the other points, as I learned in an immersive environment by the seat of my pants.
There was a German teacher in Norway who really hated how the Norwegian way of teaching German. In Norway the curriculi focusses a lot on grammar. This teacher decided to ditch all that in favour of speaking the language a lot more, however, and only teach grammar after the pupils had mastered the language reasonably well. This turned out great, and it even made it easier for the pupils to understand the grammar, because instead of using grammar to decipher how the language was supposed to be spoken, the pupils now used grammar as a way to describe what they already could speak. In other words, they didn't use "logic" to try to form sentences, as much as pure intuition.
I created http://masterspanish.today to help with my Spanish.
I receive a daily email, at noon Eastern time, with a Spanish article from El Pais and an English translation.
Good read. I like to think it's just life getting in the way, and if you are in the right circumstances and environment you could achieve respectable level of proficiency in almost anything, even later in life.
It's interesting that the first two - listen even without comprehension, and deprioritize grammar - correspond significantly to advances in NLP on the last few years. Unsupervised language models (that learn to predict text without any labeled task) turn out to be valuable through transfer learning in specific comprehension tasks. And old school NLP methods that focused on grammar tree construction have fallen behind attention and transformer based methods that learn softer, more abstract representations of structure.
It's great to finally have scientific validation of my hypothesis that the Dutch language is pretty much just drunk German :D
I can speak 5 languages but having a drink didn't help me to learn any of them :-) Quite the contrary.
Oddly enough, these things all seem to apply for me when learning to play an instrument (especially the “just listen” one). I do much better in practice when I listen to what I’m practicing than when I don’t.
I work for a language learning company, where I am building VR apps for immersive (in both the VR and language learning sense of the word) language learning.
I had a friend tell me that you're only truly near-native in a foreign language if you can troll online using it.
It's crass, but I like it.
I'm currently learning Japanese and I've only been at it for a month. My tools are :-
1) Pimsleur Japanese [0]
2) Michel Thomas Japanese [1]
3) Creating my own Anki decks [2]
4) Genki Textbooks [3]
5) Remembering the Kanji [4]
Firstly, I know it's going to take at least 2 years to be good at Japanese and I'm intent on just enjoying the journey. I have absolutely no need to rush.
Right now I'm only concentrating on my speaking and listening skills. I'm not at all fussed about pitch accents and will improve that when I get a tutor (think year 2).
My methodology is going to consist of:
- Doing each CD of Pimsleur (there are 5 in total, with 30 lessons each).
- Actively listening and speaking for 30 minutes in the morning, just after lunch and just after dinner. Thus doing 1 hour and a half a day.
- Write down all the newer words for each lesson into a notebook for review later.
- Writing down all the sentences in an excel spreadsheet for the anki deck. So far I have around 900 words and sentences.
My progress is that I have completed the first CD and I have memorised into my long term memory up to lesson 20. Unfortunately my memory starts to fade when reviewing the anki deck past lesson 20 and I get the sentence order incorrect even though I know the words. Of course, I want to get to 100% before moving onto the next CD.
To switch things up a bit. I've now started to do Michele Thomas CDs and listen passively in the background. Michele Thomas isn't as demanding for your attention as Pimsleur.
When I have finished both groups of CDs. I'll go through the Genki textbook and after that start to focus on my writing skills with Remember the Kanji.
After that, that's when I'll go on italki [5] and get a tutor.
Oh and when watching Anime (with Japanese Subs). I understand around 10% so far, in just a month. I do start to laugh though when the subs are not correct.
I can only imagine what I understand, when I have finished all CDs. I hope to get to at least 75% and then start to watch Anime with the subs removed.
Finally, if anyone wants to go the immersion route. Highly recommend Matt vs Japan [6]. I'll be doing this once I finish the CDs and books.
[0]: https://www.pimsleur.com/learn-japanese/pimsleur-japanese-le...
[1]: https://www.michelthomas.com/learn-japanese/
[2]: https://apps.ankiweb.net/
[3]: https://www.amazon.com/GENKI-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-...
[4]: https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kanji-Complete-Japanese-C...