Learning a Language Will Change your Life for Good | Christopher McCormick | TEDxPhnomPenh
Summary
TLDRThe speaker shares a personal journey of language learning, starting with an attempt to learn Cambodian from a monk, leading to a broader discussion on the transformative power of languages. They emphasize the cognitive and social benefits of bilingualism, the importance of early language exposure, and the differences in learning approaches between children and adults. Highlighting the global demand for language skills, they advocate for modern, culturally immersive teaching methods that leverage technology to make language learning more accessible and effective.
Takeaways
- 🎉 The speaker was excited about visiting Cambodia and learning the Kamai language, highlighting the importance of cultural immersion in language learning.
- 📚 The experience with the monk showed that learning a language can be non-traditional and still offer valuable cultural insights, even without formal teaching materials.
- 🌏 The speaker's love for languages has led to a career with EF Education First, an organization that teaches languages globally, emphasizing the transformative power of language learning.
- 👶 Babies are naturally equipped to learn any language, and early exposure to multiple languages has cognitive and social benefits for children.
- 🧠 Learning a language enhances memory, attention, reading, writing, understanding of one's own language, critical thinking, and even aging.
- 👶👨 Differences in language learning approaches between children and adults were noted, with children being more fearless and adults needing to reconnect with their creativity.
- 🏠 The speaker's upbringing in Texas during the Cold War influenced their perspective, but early exposure to diverse cultures and languages sparked a lifelong interest in language learning.
- 🌐 The importance of understanding cultural values and behaviors in language learning was stressed, as it provides a deeper connection to the language and its speakers.
- 💼 Language skills are increasingly important in the global economy, with multilingualism correlating with higher trade, education, and income levels.
- 🌍 Learning one of the UN's world languages (French, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, English, Mandarin) provides access to a significant portion of the global population.
- 🚀 Advances in digital and mobile technology have revolutionized language learning, making it more accessible, interactive, and connected to real-world cultural experiences.
Q & A
What was the speaker's initial reaction upon learning they would be visiting Cambodia?
-The speaker was very excited and immediately thought about learning the Khmer language and culture.
How did the speaker and their partner attempt to learn Khmer while in Sri Lanka?
-They asked around and found a Cambodian monk studying at a nearby temple who agreed to teach them Khmer without any formal teaching materials.
What challenges did the speaker encounter while learning Khmer from the monk?
-The monk had no books and no idea how to teach a language, and there were complications due to certain words used by monks for everyday things that made simple conversations complex.
What resources did the speaker use to learn the Khmer alphabet?
-The speaker used an iPad app and online videos and resources to learn the Khmer alphabet.
Why does the speaker love languages and how has it impacted their life?
-The speaker loves languages because they have been studying them since childhood, studied them at university, and it has led to their career and the opportunity to travel and work in over 65 countries.
What is the speaker's profession and the organization they work for?
-The speaker works with EF Education First, an organization that teaches languages around the world to people of all ages.
What are some practical benefits of being bilingual according to research studies mentioned in the script?
-Bilinguals have better memory, pay attention better, read and write better, understand their own language better, think better, age better, and do better in school. They also develop better attitudes towards others.
How do children and adults differ in their approach to language learning according to the script?
-Children are fearless and can quickly master a language to play and make friends, while adults may have lost touch with their natural creative instinct and may have additional pressures due to academic, professional, or home reasons for learning a language.
What was the speaker's childhood background and how did it influence their interest in languages and cultures?
-The speaker grew up in Texas during the late 1960s and 1970s, a time of international tension and racial/ethnic strife. However, they had experiences with languages and meeting people from other places that challenged their preconceptions and sparked their interest in exploring the world.
How did the speaker's parents encourage their interest in languages and cultures?
-The speaker's parents, who were educators in the arts, encouraged them and their brother to read a lot and use their imaginations. They introduced them to languages and culture through music, theater, and books, and took them to the public library regularly.
What is the significance of the year 2012 mentioned in the script and its impact on language learning?
-2012 marked a significant economic shift where developing countries imported more than developed countries for the first time, and their output grew faster. This increased the need for language and culture skills for international trade and cooperation.
What are some of the traditional methods of language teaching that the script suggests are problematic?
-The script suggests that uneven teacher training, a lack of quality resources, a lack of clear national policy on language learning, and a simple traditional approach to teaching are problematic and hold people back.
How does the script describe the benefits of using digital and online technologies in language learning?
-The script describes the benefits as the ability to unleash the creativity of teachers and students, allowing for faster progress, bringing the world into the classroom, and providing cultural contact without leaving home. It also mentions the ability to connect online with teachers or work with personal adaptive systems.
What is the final message the speaker conveys about the value of learning a language?
-The speaker conveys that learning a language can change one's life by giving a better brain, a more open mind, and a brighter future. It teaches humility and allows one to find their voice and see who they can become.
Outlines
🌏 Embracing Language Learning in Cambodia
The speaker expresses excitement about visiting Cambodia and the desire to learn the Kamai language. Despite the challenges of finding a teacher, they end up learning from a Cambodian monk with no formal teaching materials. The experience, although not yielding much language proficiency, provides a deep cultural insight. The speaker's passion for languages is highlighted, having studied them since childhood, and their career with EF Education First, which teaches languages globally. The transformative power of language learning is emphasized, including cognitive benefits and the impact on personal growth and opportunities.
👶 Childhood Experiences Shaping Global Perspective
The speaker recounts their childhood in Texas during the late 1960s and 1970s, a time of international tension and domestic racial strife. Despite this, they had transformative experiences with immigrants and exchange students, including Vietnamese and Cambodian 'boat people' and Russian defectors. These interactions, along with exposure to international sports events, broadened their worldview. The speaker's parents fostered a love for arts and imagination, leading them to explore languages through music, theater, and books. Early exposure to language learning resources at the local library sparked a lifelong interest in understanding and connecting with different cultures.
🌐 The Importance of Cultural Understanding in Language Education
The speaker discusses the significance of cultural understanding in language learning, emphasizing that knowing a culture's values, beliefs, and attitudes is as important as learning the language itself. They describe how EF Education First incorporates cultural insights into their language teaching, preparing students for international success. The economic shift towards developing countries and the need for language and cultural skills in the global workforce are highlighted. The speaker also addresses the importance of learning one of the UN's world languages to access a large portion of the global population and the benefits of multilingualism for economic development.
🚀 Advancing Language Learning with Technology and Cultural Integration
The speaker outlines how modern technology is revolutionizing language learning, making it more accessible and effective. They discuss the use of digital platforms, online resources, and mobile technologies to facilitate learning and cultural interaction. The importance of teaching real-world tasks and simulations is emphasized, as is the role of humility in language learning. The speaker concludes by advocating for the promotion of creativity, discovery, exploration, and collaboration in language education, and the personal growth that comes from learning a new language.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Kamai language
💡Language learning
💡Cultural immersion
💡Bilingualism
💡Language acquisition
💡EF Education First
💡Cultural contact
💡Language policies
💡Digital learning
💡Multilingualism
💡Humility
Highlights
The speaker's excitement about learning the Kamai language and culture in Sri Lanka.
The unconventional language learning experience with a monk who had no formal teaching materials.
The cultural immersion and language learning through the monk's life and experiences.
The importance of language learning in personal growth and career development.
The benefits of being bilingual, including improved memory, attention, and cognitive abilities.
The differences in language learning approaches between children and adults.
The challenges of teaching languages to adults and the need to rekindle their creativity.
The speaker's personal journey from Texas to becoming a global language educator.
The impact of international experiences on the speaker's perspective and language learning.
The role of technology in enhancing language learning and cultural understanding.
The economic significance of language skills in global trade and business.
The correlation between English proficiency and a country's economic development.
The need for a shift in traditional language teaching methods to embrace technology and creativity.
The potential of language learning to foster humility and a deeper understanding of oneself and others.
The transformative power of language learning in personal and professional life.
The importance of starting language learning early and promoting a culture of multilingualism.
The speaker's advocacy for language learning as a means to open doors and create opportunities.
Transcripts
[Music]
[Music]
[Applause]
when I found out that I'd be coming to
Cambodia I was so excited and the very
first thing I thought about is how can I
learn the language I was in Sri Lanka at
the time with my partner and we both
wanted to get an introduction to the
Kamai language and culture we asked
around turns out it's actually quite
hard to find a Kamai teacher but there
was a monk studying at a temple nearby
and he was from Cambodia so we asked him
to teach us and he
agreed he had no books he had no clue
how to teach a language but he was
friendly he was funny he was curious all
the right qualities for Learning and
teaching he came to our house and sat at
the head of a long dining table with his
orange robe spilling all around him it
was a beautiful sight and he laughed as
we struggled with the alphabet trying to
get our mouth around these sounds and we
invented lessons on the
spot it be got it got complicated and
funny rather quickly as many of you know
in the Kamai language there are certain
words that monks use for everyday things
so eating or drinking or I or you so
having a simple conversation about
dinner got very complicated he couldn't
eat after 1 p.m. at the temple so he
didn't see the point of having a
practice dialogue about having dinner at
a restaurant and no matter what we did
we could not convince him not to be
himself for that moment needless to say
we didn't learn very much in those
lessons but that really wasn't the point
fortunately I had already found an iPad
app to teach the alphabet I had found
online videos and resources just
spending time with him was a Fant
fantastic window into his culture and
his life and his language and that's
what made the difference and it was an
excellent preparation for coming to
Cambodia now I love languages I've been
studying them since I was a kid it's
what I studied at University and it's
how I found my career it's also how I
met my partner and it's the way that
I've traveled around the world and had
the chance to work and study and explore
upwards of 65 countries with Cambodia
being my 65th so I now work with an
organization called e F Education First
and we teach languages around the world
to people from all ages and so having so
many people we've had Millions go
through our programs it gives us a
fantastic perspective on learning and
teaching what's actually happening and
we get to watch people grow in real time
and this is what I love about languages
the process actually changes you
learning a language will change your
life it will give you a better mind it
will stretch your understanding of the
world and your opportunities in life
increase when a baby is born it's
equipped to learn any one of the 7,000
languages in the world it can learn to
make the sounds and distinguish the
grammar and the rules and if it's
exposed to more than one language it'll
be able to tell them apart very simply
and research studies on bilingualism in
young children shows time and time again
that having languages also other
practical benefits people who have
languages also have a better memory they
pay attention better they read better
they write better they understand their
own language better they think better
they grow older better and age better
they do better in school and crucially
they develop better attitudes about
others these are real practical benefits
and the sooner you start the
better now a person can learn a language
at any age
but how they go about it kids and adults
is different and that also comes into
how we teach them kids are fearless they
can quickly Master a language simply in
order to play and make
friends they can quickly absorb the
rules make the sounds and tell things
apart on their own they have a fantastic
curiosity and creative ability with
language so as parents and Educators
what's most important at an early age is
to make sure that we develop that
Curiosity we develop that creativity
because that positive attitude will last
them for a lifetime now adults are more
complicated they have maturity they can
sit still for longer that helps but they
may have lost touch with that natural
creative Instinct and play with language
they also will have academic or
professional or home reasons for
learning a language and that can add
additional pressure so what we have to
be thinking about when we teach the
languages is how to connect the adults
knowledge of themselves to raise their
self-awareness of what progress they're
actually making and how it connects to
the real world and then we also have to
work to find that creativity again to
help them take risks and become more
confident and it's a fascinating process
to watch as people come out of their
shelves and they become someone
new I'm an unlikely person to be talking
about this today based on where I come
from it almost it would seem impossible
from my childhood perspective I grew up
in Texas I was born in Texas in the
south of the United States at the end of
the
1960s and from the 60s and on into the
70s the United States was not a very
optimistic Place
internationally we were locked in a cold
war with the Soviet Union we were
struggling to understand our involvement
and cope with our involvement here in
the region in Vietnam and in Cambodia we
were told to be worried about what
communism might do to us and closer to
home in Texas along the border with
Mexico and across the south of the
United States racial and ethnic tension
was real it was in our neighborhoods in
our schools in our classrooms but
fortunately I had several experiences as
a child both with languages and with
meeting people from other places that
helped to challenge all that and help me
to see another side of the
story the Texas of my childhood was not
necessarily always the most open-minded
place but ironically there's an
incredible amount of diversity there
through a history of immigration over
the centuries and due to more recent
geopolitical events in my primary
school there were young Brave Vietnamese
and Cambodian children who arrived not
speaking a word of English and quietly
integrating and thriving the next they
called them boat people which we didn't
really understand because we were in the
middle of Texas not near any water we
also had real live Russians who had
defected from the Soviet Union and moved
into the neighborhood and one Russian
family set up a small gymnastics
training school because they were
professional gymnasts in the Soviet
Union so I joined and regularly made a
fool of myself every week there but
luckily one day the cold war came to
Texas and in
1979 my hometown Fort Worth Texas hosted
the World Cup Gymnastics championships
and we the Russian coach took us now I
was 10 years old at the time and we were
going to be seeing the Fearsome Soviets
and Romanian gymnasts the ones who were
famous for never smiling so we were
really excited but also a little bit
scared however we went to the practice
rounds they let us in to come and watch
them train and we saw them and they were
teenagers on an adventure abroad and it
made a huge impact on us because we saw
them laughing playing we got to meet
them we even got to train with some of
the gymnasts in the competition so it
turned everything upside down from what
we had been told and what to expect
also we had exchange students arriving
by the dozens in our city and our
schools we hosted a Chinese musician in
our house who sang all day long and then
we had a Swedish exchange student as
well all of these International
experiences acted like passport stamps
on my young brain and it made me want to
explore more and collect more of them I
wanted to get out in the world and find
out for myself eventually I did learn
Russian and I traveled to the across the
Soviet Union and in modern Russia today
I learned Spanish and I lived in Mexico
and I taught there I had a fantastic
opportunity to move to China while China
was opening up in the early 2000s and I
lived in Shanghai for three years and
many many opportunities apart from that
and I'm here with you
today now fortunately my parents saw the
world a little bit differently they
encouraged me and my brother to read a
lot and to use our imaginations they are
Educators in the Arts and and they gave
us our first exposure to languages and
culture through music through theater
through books every week we went to the
public library and we devoured stacks of
books in between visits and along the
way I discovered that you could check
out cassette tapes if you remember those
or records going way back where you
could teach yourself another language
and it must have been a very funny site
for the local librarian to see a young
boy 8 years old at the counter with a
stack of mystery books in one hand and
beginner Japanese and the other but I
was hooked it was almost magical
listening to people make these sounds
from all around the planet and I began
to understand that there were rules and
that there were patterns they were doing
things like we did in English I wanted
to figure out that puzzle but more
importantly I wanted to meet these
people I wanted to know who they were
now this was all very low Tech this
media wasn't the problem though it was
the method what was missing was a into
the culture of these people I couldn't
see them I couldn't see what was
important to them and understanding how
different cultures behave and what's
important to them is a very powerful
experience in learning it teaches you
what's important to you you learn a lot
about yourself in the process but you
also learn about the values and the
beliefs and attitudes of another culture
so when we teach languages today we do
focus on that we focus on what is
important in that culture we teach the
building blocks of language but we also
look at what do people find important
what do they fear what do they believe
in who is important and why the the the
tabos what happens at home and in the
office and this allows people to get a
window that's bigger than the language
they get a perspective on the culture
and this will crucially help them if
they're going to work and travel
internationally will help them be
successful so when we teach we want to
give people a window on to cultures and
we want to allow them to be able to see
where they can take in life as
well knowing other cultures and knowing
other languages does bring opportunities
it opens doors and 2012 is a very
important year for the first time
there's a big economic shift happening
developing countries will import more
this year than developed
countries also their output is growing
faster while the developed countries
have
stomped this means that more people in
the world today are trading in more
places than ever before and they need to
be able to
communicate and Company Executives that
have been recently surve said that the
lack of language and culture skills in
their organizations was holding them
back they can't grow they've also said
that in recruitment it's going to be
essential to hire someone who speaks at
least one additional
language so certainly countries and
companies recognize that they need
language speakers of all
kinds but which which language should
you
learn knowing just one of the world's uh
the United Nations World languages
French Russian Arabic Spanish English
and Mandarin will give you access to
hundreds of millions of people on the
planet over 2third of the world's
population speaks just one of those
languages and in the case of English
over the next decade over two billion
people will be speaking the language and
most of them are not speakers under a
quarter so English has become the
dominant language for research for trade
international cooperation and that may
not be the case for the long term but it
certainly is undeniably important right
now and at EF we did some research on
this we gave a free English test to over
two million people around the world and
we looked at the results we grouped the
results by country which countries spoke
the best English and then we took that
ranking and compared it to those
countries Economic Development and the
results were clear and convincing in
every case the higher the level of
English in the country correlated
strongly with higher trade higher
education attainment and higher income
and the countries that did this best
were those that promoted a culture of
multilingualism and diversity they
invested in more years of schooling per
child and crucially they started
language learning early they've realized
that they can can afford not
to
now the world needs language speakers
the need is more urgent than ever before
but the traditional methods that we see
around the world are still aggravating
the problem uneven teacher training a
lack of quality resources a lack of a
Clear Vision on a national level in
terms of policy and a simple traditional
approach to teaching they aggravate the
problem they're holding people back the
good news
is that language learning is actually
better and faster than ever before we
know much more about how people learn
and what they need to do it with new
digital and online and mobile
technologies we're able to unleash the
creativity of teachers and students to
allow them to make progress faster and
we can bring the world into the
classroom allowing students to speak and
work with material that really matters
to them with a simple click students can
connect online and work virtually with
teachers or on their own with personal
adaptive
systems we can also bring media to them
directly so they can actually connect
and have that cultural contact right
from where they're working if they're
learning Mandarin they can see people in
Shanghai exploring a market they can
look at local menus from a restaurant in
London watch the live local news in New
York or play games with new friends in
Moscow this cultural contact is real and
it's powerful but you don't have to
leave home to get it and so it makes it
far more access accessible for more
people we're also completely changing
what we do in the classroom by
introducing mobile technologies we can
untether students from the computers and
they can turn in and face each other and
collaborate and this makes the
experience far more
social we're also able to change what we
teach to focus on the tasks that people
will do in the real world and the these
kinds of simulations give students a
taste of what to expect when using the
language and also a vision of who they
can
become languages will help you realize
your
potential indeed they'll give you a
better brain more open mind and a
brighter future the way we teach them
today is about promoting creativity and
Discovery and exploration and
collaboration this helps you become more
confident to learn to take risks and be
independent you get a chance to find
your voice in the process and you get to
see who you can
become but one of the best things about
learning a language is that it teaches
you
humility trying to be yourself in
another language strips your personality
down to its most basic elements
languages are complicated and subtle
they're beautiful systems approaching a
new one can seem like an impossible
task but it's good to do things that
seem impossible it can change your life
thank you
Ver Más Videos Relacionados
Why We Struggle Learning Languages | Gabriel Wyner | TEDxNewBedford
Through Your Child's Eyes: American Sign Language [Subtitled]
Considerations in Language Acquisition
ALG: The Most Unique Language Learning Method
I dedicated my summer learning 3 languages.... | Tips on how to learn a new language
4 reasons to learn a new language | John McWhorter
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)