How to learn any language in six months | Chris Lonsdale | TEDxLingnanUniversity

Summary

A compelling English summary providing a brief yet accurate overview of the video script to engage users.

Takeaways

• 😀 Learning faster allows you to spend less time in school
• 👍 Hypnopaedia (sleep learning) inspired new research on learning
• 🧠 Knowing multiple languages helps solve global challenges
• 🔍 Modeling successful language learners reveals key principles
• 😊 Any adult can learn a new language in 6 months by following 5 principles
• 📚 Comprehensible input and listening extensively accelerates learning
• 🔨 Using language as a tool makes it more relevant and easier to learn
• 🙂 Being relaxed and comfortable with ambiguity helps learning
• 🤝 Getting a 'language parent' provides helpful comprehensible input
• 💡 Creating direct connections between images and words boosts memory

Q & A

リンゲリーさんはなぜ中国語を習得しようと思ったのか

1981年に中国に行くことを決め、2年以内に中国語をネイティブレベルにしたいと思ったからです。

リンゲリーさんはなぜ睡眠学習についてソ連の研究者に手紙を書いたのか

11歳の時に興味を持ち、睡眠中にテープレコーダーから言語を学習する「睡眠学習」のことを調べたかったからです。

リンゲリーさんはなぜ大人が第二言語を6ヶ月以内に流暢に話せると信じているのか

15~20年間言語学習をモデル化して研究してきた結果、5つの原則と7つのアクションに従えば誰でも第二言語を6ヶ月以内に流暢に話せることが分かったからです。

言語獲得の4つの重要な単語とは何か

注意、意味、関連性、記憶の4つです。これらは言語学習において非常に重要なつながりがあります。

言語をツールとして日1から使う第2の原則とは何か

言語をコミュニケーションのツールとして活用し始めることです。子供のように言語を使ってコミュニケーションを取ることが大切です。

最初にメッセージの意味を理解する第3の原則とは何か

メッセージの意味を最初に理解すれば、言語は無意識の内に獲得されるという原則です。これは「comprehensible input」と呼ばれる概念で、研究で裏付けられています。

学習する7つのアクションの内、第5のアクションとは何か

口の筋肉を鍛えて発音できるようにすることです。他の人に通じる発音をするには43個の顔の筋肉を協調させる必要があるからです。

言語の親とは何者か

学習者のコミュニケーションを理解しようと努力し、間違いを直さず、学習者の意図した意味をフィードバックしてくれる人のことです。

ダイレクトコネクトとは何か

母語と目標言語の単語を反復して覚えるのではなく、メンタルイメージと記憶を利用して、すでに持っているイメージと新しい音を直接つなげる学習法のことです。

このTED Talkのメッセージを1文で表すとどうなるか

5つの原則と7つのアクションに従えば、誰でも6ヶ月以内に第二言語を流暢に話せるようになれる。

Outlines

00:00

🤔 学習を加速する方法

講演者は、学校教育が学習において障害になることがあると述べ、自らの経験を通じて、学習を加速する方法についての長年の疑問を共有します。若い頃、睡眠学習（ヒプノペディア）に興味を持ち、それが学習に関する他の研究への扉を開いたこと、そしてその疑問が心理学に対する情熱へとつながったことを紹介します。1981年に中国に渡り、2年以内に中国語を流暢に話すことを目標にした彼の挑戦は、心理学の研究結果を学習プロセスに応用する試みでした。結果として、6ヶ月で中国語を流暢に話せるようになり、これが他言語学習の可能性を広げる旅の始まりとなりました。

05:02

📚 言語学習の5原則と7つの行動

講演者は、成人が6ヶ月以内に第二言語を流暢に学ぶことが可能であると主張し、この過程において重要な5つの原則（注目、意味、関連性、記憶、そして学習におけるこれらの相互作用）と7つの行動を紹介します。これには、才能や没入だけでは言語学習には不十分であり、理解から学習が始まるという考えが含まれます。具体的には、関連性のある言語コンテンツに焦点を当て、言語を通信の道具として初日から使用し、理解できる入力を通じて言語を無意識のうちに習得することが強調されます。また、物理的な訓練が言語学習において重要であり、ポジティブな心理状態が学習を促進すると説明します。

10:02

🌍 言語学習を通じたコミュニケーションの強化

講演者は、言語学習における5つの原則を踏まえて、具体的な7つの行動―脳を言語に浸す、意味を先に理解する、混ぜることを始める、コアに焦点を当てる、言語の親を見つける、顔を真似る、そして直接結びつける―を提案します。これらの行動は、言語を効率的かつ効果的に学ぶための実践的なアプローチを提供します。例えば、言語の親は学習者が安全な環境でコミュニケーションスキルを磨くのを助け、顔の模倣は発音の改善に役立ちます。直接結びつける行動は、新しい言語の単語を覚える過程をより効率的にする方法を示唆しています。

15:03

🎓 6ヶ月で第二言語を習得する

講演者は、任意の成人が6ヶ月以内に第二言語を流暢に学ぶことが可能であるという見解を繰り返し強調し、これを実現するために必要な5つの原則と7つの行動を要約します。彼は、これらの原則と行動が学習者のコントロール下にあると述べ、積極的に取り組むことで言語習得の速度と効率を大幅に向上させることができると結論付けます。講演は、人間の進歩の歴史を振り返りながら、私たちが自らの限界を拡張し続けることの重要性を強調して終了します。

Keywords

💡学習のスピード

ビデオの主題は、如何にして学習のスピードを上げるかということです。スクリプトでは、学習のスピードを上げることで、学校での時間を短縮できると述べています。

💡言語学習

スクリプトでは、成人が新しい言語を6ヶ月以内に流暢に学ぶことができると主張しています。言語学習の速度を上げる原則と行動について説明しています。

💡注意

学習の最初の原則は注意です。関連性のある内容に注意を向けることが重要だと説明しています。

Highlights

どのように学習をスピードアップできるかについて長年疑問を持っている

6ヶ月で中国語が流暢になったことで、言語学習における五つの原則と七つの行動を特定した

言語学習には才能は必要ない

完全な言語浸泡はうまくいかない

注意、意味、関連性、記憶の四つの単語がとても重要

コンテンツの関連性に焦点を当てるべき

ツールを使って習得する

メッセージを最初に理解することが大切

混ぜ始めることが言語学習には重要

言語の親を見つけるべき

表情を真似する必要がある

ダイレクトコネクトという直接結びつけるテクニック

五つの原則と七つの実践がある

六ヶ月以内に流暢になれる

才能は関係ない、熱意が大切

Transcripts

Transcriber: TED Translators admin Reviewer: Allam Zedan

The people in the back, can you hear me clearly?

OK, good.

Have you ever held a question in mind

for so long that it becomes part of how you think?

Maybe even part of who you are as a person?

Well I've had a question in my mind for many, many years

and that is: How can you speed up learning?

Now, this is an interesting question

because if you speed up learning,

you can spend less time at school.

And if you learn really fast,

you probably wouldn't have to go to school at all.

Now, when I was young, school was sort of OK but...

I found quite often that school got in the way of learning

so I had this question in mind: How do you learn faster?

And this began when I was very, very young,

when I was 11 years old,

I wrote a letter to researchers in the Soviet Union, asking about hypnopaedia,

this is sleep-learning,

where you get a tape recorder, you put it beside your bed

and it turns on in the middle of the night

when you're sleeping,

and you're supposed to be learning from this.

A good idea, unfortunately it doesn't work.

But, hypnopaedia did open the doors to research in other areas

and we've had incredible discoveries about

learning that began with that first question.

I went on from there to become passionate about psychology

and I have been involved in psychology in many different ways

for the rest of my life up until this point.

In 1981, I took myself to China

and I decided that I was going to be native level in Chinese inside two years.

Now, you need to understand that in 1981, everybody thought

Chinese was really, really difficult

and that a Westerner could study for 10 years or more

and never really get very good at it.

And I also went in with a different idea

which was: taking all of the conclusions

from psychological research up to that point

and applying them to the learning process.

What was really cool was that in six months I was fluent in Mandarin Chinese

and it took a little bit longer to get up to native.

But I looked around and I saw all of these people from different countries

struggling terribly with Chinese,

I saw Chinese people struggling terribly to learn English and other languages,

and so my question got refined down to:

How can you help a normal adult

learn a new language quickly, easily and effectively?

Now this is a really, really important question in today's world.

We have massive challenges with environment,

we have massive challenges with social dislocation,

with wars, all sorts of things going on

and if we can't communicate,

we're really going to have difficulty solving these problems.

So we need to be able to speak each other's languages,

this is really, really important.

The question then is: How do you do that?

Well, it's actually really easy.

You look around for people who can already do it,

you look for situations where it's already working

and then you identify the principles and apply them.

It's called modelling and I've been looking at language learning

and modelling language learning for about 15 to 20 years now.

And my conclusion, my observation from this is

that any adult can learn a second language to fluency inside six months.

Now when I say this, most people think I'm crazy, this is not possible.

So let me remind everybody of the history of human progress,

it's all about expanding our limits.

In 1950, everybody believed that running one mile in four minutes was impossible,

and then Roger Bannister did it in 1956

and from there it's got shorter and shorter.

100 years ago everybody believed that heavy stuff doesn't fly.

Except it does and we all know this.

How does heavy stuff fly?

We reorganise the material using principles that we have learned

from observing nature, birds in this case.

And today we've gone even further...

We've gone even further, so you can fly a car.

You can buy one of these for a couple 100.000 US dollars.

We now have cars in the world that fly.

And there's a different way to fly which we've learned from squirrels.

So all you need to do is copy what a flying squirrel does,

build a suit called a wing suit and off you go, you can fly like a squirrel.

Now most people, a lot of people, I wouldn't say everybody

but a lot of people think they can't draw.

However there are some key principles, five principles, that you can apply

to learning to draw and you can actually learn to draw in five days.

So, if you draw like this, you learn these principles for five days

and apply them and after five days you can draw something like this.

Now I know this is true because that was my first drawing

and after five days of applying these principles that was what I was able to do.

And I looked at this and I went:

"Wow, so that's how I look like when I'm concentrating so intensely

that my brain is exploding."

So, anybody can learn to draw in five days

and in the same way, with the same logic,

anybody can learn a second language in six months.

How? There are five principles and seven actions.

There may be a few more but these are absolutely core.

And before I get into those I just want to talk about two myths,

I want to dispel two myths.

The first is that you need talent.

Let me tell you about Zoe.

Zoe came from Australia, went to Holland, was trying to learn Dutch,

struggling extremely, extremely... a great deal

and finally people were saying: "You're completely useless,"

"you're not talented," "give up," "you're a waste of time"

and she was very, very depressed.

And then she came across these five principles,

she moved to Brazil and she applied them

and in six months she was fluent in Portuguese,

so talent doesn't matter.

People also think that immersion in a new country is the way to learn a language.

But look around Hong Kong, look at all the westerners

who've been here for 10 years, who don't speak a word of Chinese.

Look at all the Chinese living in America, Britain, Australia, Canada

have been there 10, 20 years and they don't speak any English.

Immersion per se does not work.

Why? Because a drowning man cannot learn to swim.

When you don't speak a language, you're like a baby.

And if you drop yourself into a context

which is all adults talking about stuff over your head, you won't learn.

So, what are the five principles that you need to pay attention to?

First: the four words,

attention, meaning, relevance and memory,

and these interconnect in very, very important ways.

Especially when you're talking about learning.

Come with me on a journey through a forest.

You go on a walk through a forest

and you see something like this... Little marks on a tree,

maybe you pay attention, maybe you don't.

You go another 50 metres and you see this...

You should be paying attention.

Another 50 metres, if you haven't been paying attention, you see this...

And at this point, you're paying attention.

And you've just learned that this... is important,

it's relevant because it means this,

and anything that is related, any information related to your survival

is stuff that you're going to pay attention to

and therefore you're going to remember it.

If it's related to your personal goals,

then you're going to pay attention to it.

If it's relevant, you're going to remember it.

So, the first rule, first principle for learning a language

is focus on language content that is relevant to you.

Which brings us to tools.

We master tools by using tools and we learn tools the fastest

when they are relevant to us.

So let me share a story.

A keyboard is a tool.

Typing Chinese a certain way, there are methods for this. That's a tool.

I had a colleague many years ago

who went to night school; Tuesday night, Thursday night,

two hours each time, practicing at home,

she spent nine months, and she did not learn to type Chinese.

And one night we had a crisis.

We had 48 hours to deliver a training manual in Chinese.

And she got the job, and I can guarantee you

in 48 hours, she learned to type Chinese

because it was relevant, it was meaningful, it was important,

she was using a tool to create value.

So the second principle for learning a language is to use your language

as a tool to communicate right from day one.

As a kid does.

When I first arrived in China, I didn't speak a word of Chinese,

and on my second week, I got to take a train ride overnight.

I spent eight hours sitting in the dining car

talking to one of the guards on the train,

he took an interest in me for some reason,

and we just chatted all night in Chinese

and he was drawing pictures and making movements with his hands

and facial expressions and piece by piece by piece

I understood more and more.

But what was really cool, was two weeks later,

when people were talking Chinese around me,

I was understanding some of this

and I hadn't even made any effort to learn that.

What had happened, I'd absorbed it that night on the train,

which brings us to the third principle.

When you first understand the message,

then you will acquire the language unconsciously.

And this is really, really well documented now,

it's something called comprehensible input.

There's 20 or 30 years of research on this,

Stephen Krashen, a leader in the field,

has published all sorts of these different studies

and this is just from one of them.

The purple bars show the scores on different tests for language.

The purple people were people who had learned by grammar and formal study,

the green ones are the ones who learned by comprehensible input.

So, comprehension works. Comprehension is key

and language learning is not about accumulating lots of knowledge.

In many, many ways it's about physiological training.

A woman I know from Taiwan did great in English at school,

she got A grades all the way through,

went through college, A grades, went to the US

and found she couldn't understand what people were saying.

And people started asking her: "Are you deaf?"

And she was. English deaf.

Because we have filters in our brain that filter in

the sounds that we are familiar with

and they filter out the sounds of languages that we're not.

And if you can't hear it, you won't understand it,

if you can't understand it, you're not going to learn it.

So you actually have to be able to hear these sounds.

And there are ways to do that but it's physiological training.

Speaking takes muscle.

You've got 43 muscles in your face,

you have to coordinate those in a way

that you make sounds that other people will understand.

If you've ever done a new sport for a couple of days,

and you know how your body feels? Hurts?

If your face is hurting, you're doing it right.

And the final principle is state. Psycho-physiological state.

If you're sad, angry, worried, upset, you're not going to learn. Period.

If you're happy, relaxed, in an Alpha brain state, curious,

you're going to learn really quickly,

and very specifically you need to be tolerant of ambiguity.

If you're one of those people who needs to understand 100 percent

every word you're hearing, you will go nuts,

because you'll be incredibly upset all the time, because you're not perfect.

If you're comfortable with getting some, not getting some,

just paying attention to what you do understand,

you're going to be fine, relaxed, and you'll be learning quickly.

So based on those five principles, what are the seven actions that you take?

Number one: Listen a lot.

I call it brain soaking.

You put yourself in a context

where you're hearing tons and tons and tons of a language

and it doesn't matter if you understand it or not.

You're listening to the rhythms, to patterns that repeat,

you're listening to things that stand out.

(Chinese) Pào nǎozi.

(English) So, just soak your brain in this.

The second action is that you get the meaning first,

even before you get the words.

You go: "Well how do I do that? I don't know the words!"

Well, you understand what these different postures mean.

Human communication is body language in many, many ways, so much body language.

From body language you can understand a lot of communication,

therefore, you're understanding, you're acquiring through comprehensible input.

And you can also use patterns that you already know.

If you're a Chinese speaker of Mandarin and Cantonese and you go to Vietnam,

you will understand 60 percent of what they say to you in daily conversation,

because Vietnamese is about 30 percent Mandarin, 30 percent Cantonese.

The third action: Start mixing.

You probably have never thought of this

but if you've got 10 verbs, 10 nouns and 10 adjectives,

you can say 1000 different things.

Language is a creative process.

What do babies do? OK, "me", "bath", "now".

OK, that's how they communicate.

So start mixing, get creative, have fun with it,

it doesn't have to be perfect, just has to work.

And when you're doing this, you focus on the core.

What does that mean?

Well, any language is high frequency content.

In English 1000 words covers 85 percent

of anything you're ever going to say in daily communication.

3000 words gives you 98 percent

of anything you're going to say in daily conversation.

You got 3000 words, you're speaking the language.

The rest is icing on the cake.

And when you're just beginning with a new language,

start with your tool box. Week number one,

in your new language you say things like:

"How do you say that?" "I don't understand,"

"repeat that please," "what does that mean?"

all in your target language.

You're using it as a tool, making it useful to you,

it's relevant to learn other things about the language.

By week two, you should be saying things like:

"me," "this," "you," "that," "give," you know, "hot,"

simple pronouns, simple nouns, simple verbs,

simple adjectives, communicating like a baby.

And by the third or fourth week, you're getting into "glue words."

"Although," "but," "therefore," these are logical transformers

that tie bits of a language together, allowing you to make more complex meaning.

At that point you're talking.

And when you're doing that, you should get yourself a language parent.

If you look at how children and parents interact,

you'll understand what this means.

When a child is speaking, it'll be using simple words, simple combinations,

sometimes quite strange, sometimes very strange pronunciation,

other people from outside the family don't understand it.

But the parents do.

And so the kid has a safe environment, gets confidence.

The parents talk to the children with body language

and with simple language they know the child understands.

So you have a comprehensible input environment that's safe,

we know it works; otherwise none of you would speak your mother tongue.

So you get yourself a language parent,

who's somebody interested in you as a person

who will communicate with you essentially as an equal,

but pay attention to help you understand the message.

There are four rules of a language parent.

Spouses are not very good at this, OK?

But the four rules are,

first of all, they will work hard to understand what you mean

even when you're way off beat.

Secondly, they will never correct your mistakes.

Thirdly, they will feed back their understanding of what you are saying

so that you can respond appropriately and get that feedback

and then they will use words that you know.

The sixth thing you have to do, is copy the face.

You got to get the muscles working right,

so you can sound in a way that people will understand you.

There's a couple of things you do.

One is that you hear how it feels, and feel how it sounds

which means you have a feedback loop operating in your face,

but ideally if you can look at a native speaker

and just observe how they use their face,

let your unconscious mind absorb the rules,

then you're going to be able to pick it up.

And if you can't get a native speaker to look at, you can use stuff like this...

(Female voice) Sing, song, king, stung, hung.

(Chris Lonsdale) And the final idea here, the final action you need to take

is something that I call "direct connect".

What does this mean? Well most people learning a second language

sort of take the mother tongue words and the target words and go over them

again and again in their mind to try and remember them. Really inefficient.

What you need to do is realise that

everything you know is an image inside your mind, it's feelings,

if you talk about fire, you can smell the smoke,

you can hear the crackling, you can see the flames,

so what you do, is you go into that imagery and all of that memory

and you come out with another pathway. So I call it "same box, different path".

You come out of that pathway and you build it over time,

you become more and more skilled at just connecting the new sounds

to those images that you already have, into that internal representation.

And over time you even become naturally good at that process,

that becomes unconscious.

So, there are five principles that you need to work with, seven actions,

if you do any of them, you're going to improve.

And remember these are things under your control as the learner.

Do them all and you're going to be fluent in a second language in six months.

Thank you.

(Applause)