Episode 3 - Language Learning Lessons From a Polyglot | Learn Everyday English

Well, hello, and welcome to the Learn Every Day English Podcast – Your Road to English Proficiency.

Hey, you've come to the right place to improve your listening comprehension skills and mastery of the English language.

Hey, my name is Gary and I will be your host today.

I am a native English speaker born and raised in the United States, and I'm also a retired engineer living in a small Texas town.

I'm also a language learner, learning Spanish so I know what it is like to learn a new and different language.

So now, let's jump right in to today's episode.

Well, hello listeners and welcome to Episode 3 of the Learn Every Day English Podcast.

I'm glad to have you with me, and again, my name is Gary.

In this episode, we are going to talk about something interesting.

I watched a YouTube video the other day about a polyglot, and she had nine practical lessons from learning nine different languages, which I found very impressive.

Hey, but before we get started, I want to remind you that you can follow me at my webpage and go to www .learneverydayenglish .com.

That's www .learneverydayenglish, and that's all one word, .com.

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Also now, let's jump right in to today's episode.

Well, I don't know about you, but I like to watch a lot of YouTube videos, because I'm just a learner in general, maybe not just trying to learn a new language, but just learn about new and other interesting things.

And the other day, I was watching a YouTube video by a lady by the name of Lydia Machova.

I hope I pronounced that correctly.

She's from Slovakia, but what makes her interesting is that she is a polyglot.

And a polyglot is a person that speaks many different languages.

And apparently, she speaks quite a few languages and speaks them very well or fluently.

And she was giving a kind of talk or overview about nine practical lessons that she has learned from learning nine different foreign languages.

So I saw the title and found that interesting.

And the reason I wanted to listen to this, because I think we can learn from other people and not have to reinvent the wheel as the expression goes, which means we don't have to create things from the start.

We don't have to create things from scratch.

We can learn from the experience of other people and benefit from that.

And usually, polyglots are very motivated people.

And I've learned that they have a plan that works for them, which is good.

But then their plan may not necessarily be the best plan for you or the best plan for me.

So we need to be able to find our own plan of language learning.

You need to find your own plan of language learning.

And I need to find my plan.

So we need to ask ourselves, hey, why do we want to learn a new language?

What is our motivation?

That's the first thing you need to ask yourself.

If you can't answer that or have trouble, then you need to seriously think about that and try to define what is your motivation.

Also, I think it's important to ask yourself what interests you and then use those interests in your language learning journey, because that will help you.

When I was watching the video, Ms.

Machova was saying that she was going to share stories from learning nine different languages.

And she's learned English, German, Spanish, Polish, French, Esperanto, Slovak sign language, Russian and Swahili.

So like I said before, she's a Slovakian.

So she's learned Slovak as a child growing up.

And she's also going to go over what she realized about language learning and what she realized from each specific language that she studied.

And she says she wants to make sure to make it practical for anybody else learning a language.

So like I said, her bio, she's a polyglot language mentor whose mission in life is to help people learn languages in fun and effective ways.

And I've talked about this before, but I think this is important and key is to make it fun.

And she has learned nine languages so far.

And she's usually adding a new language every two years, which I found was interesting.

So she spends about two years on a language, just studying that one language for the most part.

And then if she wants to, she moves on to another language.

And of the nine, she keeps seven of them at a fluent level.

And she believes that everyone can learn a language if they find the right combination of methods on their language learning journey.

So I'm just going to jump right into what she said about the lessons that she learned in learning these nine different language.

So the first language that she learned was English.

And she started learning English when she was 11 years old.

And she said the thing that she learned, the lesson one that she learned was, hey, I don't need to wait until I am an advanced student to use authentic resources, especially if those resources are something you like, you love, enjoy, and are interested in.

And perhaps they are in your own native language.

So what does this mean?

She gave an example that she had a friend of hers who was also studying English.

And her friend began to read the book Harry Potter in English.

And at first she said she thought that was very kind of strange or odd.

Why would her friend want to try to read Harry Potter in English?

She thought that would be too difficult.

But her friend said, hey, Harry Potter, I've read this book in my own language.

So I am familiar with the content and what it's about.

And I just liked the book.

So she thought about it.

And she said, hey, that makes a lot of sense.

So the first lesson learned again is read something that you're interested in.

And like she said, don't wait until you're at an advanced level.

She thought she had to be an advanced language learner before she would start reading resources in the target language that she was studying.

But that is not the case.

You can be an intermediate learner.

Perhaps you can even be an advanced beginner.

You could read maybe young children's books in the language you are trying to learn.

So don't wait until you're an advanced learner to read material in the target language you are trying to learn.

I'll give you an example of myself.

Maybe about a year ago.

I think I was probably at the intermediate level.

I'm a member of an online Spanish language club or group.

And part of that program is to read books or novels in Spanish.

And at first I thought that was going to be very intimidating and very difficult.

And the first book that was chosen for us to read was a book by the British author C .S.

Lewis called The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

And this was a book I was familiar with because I had heard about it and read it in English when I was younger.

But I thought, man, that's going to be difficult to try to read that book in Spanish.

But I did read it and at first it was a little bit hard.

I was using my dictionary a lot and looking up a lot of words.

But I eventually read the whole book and it became easier and easier the longer I kept at it.

The second lesson learned was when Lydia Machova was studying German and she began to study German when she was 15 years old.

And she said that what she did in Slovakia, they had a lot of TV channels that she was able to watch in German from German TV stations.

So she said that she started to try to watch those German TV channels to help her learn German.

And at first it was very frustrating.

She said she couldn't understand a thing and maybe after 10 -15 minutes she just turned the TV off.

But I think she eventually went back to trying to use that.

But her lesson that she learned while studying German was a systematic plan can do wonders in a few weeks.

So come up with a plan that will help you learn the language that you're trying to learn.

I'll give you an example again of myself.

It may be applicable in some way.

When I first had the idea of trying to learn Spanish while I was driving in my car, I would turn the radio onto a Spanish radio station.

That was easy to do here in Texas because we are so close to Mexico.

And also there are a lot of Spanish radio stations here in Texas.

And the interesting thing was I couldn't understand anything that was being said.

But I kept listening to the Spanish radio stations.

And over time I may not have been able to understand much, but I became more comfortable with the sound of the language, the rhythm of the language, and the flow of the language.

And I think even for the first year I couldn't really understand much.

But I think that really helped me later on because it started to have my ear become accustomed to the Spanish language and the sounds.

So again, lesson two was have a systematic plan.

Lesson three that Lydia learned from came from when she was trying to learn Spanish when she was 19 years old.

And she told herself she would not try to just learn the language, but have fun and enjoy the language.

So again, this is one of my key things I like to stress is just have fun and try to enjoy the language.

And what she said she did, she listened to Harry Potter, or she listened to an audio book, maybe phone or tablet, but she also got the e -book, which is an electronic book that she could read.

So she listened to the Harry Potter book and read the e -book at the same time.

So while she was hearing the language, she was also seeing it and reading it at the same time.

And I have read a lot of things about this method of learning, or method of language learning, and they say that it is very, very effective.

So try to find a transcript so you can read along at the same time.

That's two sources of input, and that can really help and improve your language learning ability.

So specifically, lesson three, that she learned, she said, language learning is a lot faster when the materials and methods used are fun.

And I just want to add, we do have a YouTube channel at Learn Every Day English.

And what is good about watching YouTube videos, you can practice your listening comprehension.

But then you can also turn on the subtitles and read along in English as you watch the video and hear the conversation.

And that's if you need the subtitles, so that is a good way to learn.

So be sure and check out and subscribe to the Learn Every Day English YouTube channel.

Lesson four came when Lydia was trying to learn Polish when she was 21 years old.

And the lesson that she learned there was the only way to learn a language well is to speak it a lot.

She said that Polish is similar to Slovakian that she knew, so she thought it was going to be easy, an easy language to learn.

But she said something surprising and interesting.

She said that Polish was one of the more or most difficult languages for her to learn surprisingly.

But she ended up learning Polish and she learned it by speaking a lot with other people.

And I think this is also a key when you're trying to learn a new language.

Lesson five from Lydia came from when she was trying to learn French when she was 23 years old.

And she said the lesson that she learned there was, it may not always be the perfect time to learn a language.

Hey, and that's okay.

So she gave a personal story that during this time she was trying to learn French.

She went through a very difficult life change in her life.

She went through a relationship breakup with her boyfriend during this time.

So she was not very focused or she couldn't really focus on trying to learn a language.

And she basically had to kind of give up and to stop and take a break and then return to learning French at a later date or later time.

So this is important.

Maybe if you're going through something, especially now with the coronavirus, maybe you've lost your job or your spouse has lost their job or you've had changes in your life and things might be hectic.

You might be depressed or down.

It may not be the best time right now to learn a language.

Maybe you need some time off.

You need a break. You need to focus on other things and then come back and look at language learning at a later date.

And that's okay. Lesson six came when Lydia was trying to learn the Slovak sign language when she was 24 years old.

And this was just something she said she was curious about.

And she began taking classes once a week for two years from a school in her town.

But she said after two years, the school closed.

But the problem is there was really not much information available anywhere about Slovak sign language.

And there was not many other people that knew about this sign language or how to teach it.

So she said she had to suddenly just stop.

And she felt like she was on a deserted island.

And if you've seen the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks, or if you're on a deserted island all by yourself, and she gave an analogy or a story.

So you may try to build a raft, which is a type of boat, maybe made out of trees or logs.

And you start to try to row away from the island.

But there are waves that keep coming into the island and it's making your progress very difficult.

And you really need to get to a point that is far enough away from the island where there are no waves so that you can start to progress.

But if you stop rowing, the waves will push you back and take you back to the island.

And you have to start all over again.

And sometimes this can happen to us in our language learning journey or language learning process.

We can't stop rowing.

You need to get past a certain point beyond the island where there are no waves that are trying to push you back or stop your progress.

So the language or the lesson that she learned was you must achieve a comfortable level of fluency in order not to lose the language.

And she said that is what happened to her.

She was not able to gain or achieve a comfortable level of fluency or ability in this language.

So she lost it. She admitted that.

So she says now she does not know how to use Slovak's sign language and will need to start all over again from the beginning.

Lesson seven came when she was trying to learn a language called Esperanto when she was 25 years old.

And the lesson learned there was that language learning is fun when you think of it as a decoding game.

Decoding is kind of like being a detective.

You try to find things in the language that maybe makes sense for you or you can relate them to other things that you already know.

So she said focus on and look for the words you do know that may be similar to or that you can relate to your native language.

And this can help you stay positive because if not, you may become negative and get frustrated and try to decode words or try to find out what the words may mean based on the context of the sentence or the paragraph that you're reading.

So it's kind of like being a detective and using a detective way of learning a language.

Lesson eight came when Lydia was trying to learn Russian when she was 26 years old.

And she gave a very interesting kind of analogy or story about this.

And she said that we or a lot of language learners think that we learn a language linearly, like a straight line that kind of moves up at a constant angle and that we just get better a little bit every day.

But what actually happens is that in the beginning when you're learning a language, you're not really seeing a whole lot of improvement.

So it can be very frustrating.

So actually, our language learning experience is more like an exponential curve.

If you know what that is, it starts at the beginning.

You're really not going up.

You're really not improving.

And it takes some time before the curve or the improvement starts to go up.

But as it begins to go up, it begins to go up exponentially or a lot quicker than it does in a linear fashion.

But in the beginning, she talked about going through a valley of disappointment where a lot of people just stop and quit.

And she relates this or calls this the plateau of latent potential.

And this came from a book called Atomic Habits by a person by the name of James Clear.

So what this means is a plateau is like a level point where you are not really improving or going up.

And this says that people make a few small changes, which is really what happens in learning a language.

The changes or improvement are very small or very small steps.

But we fail to see the tangible or the real results and we decide to stop.

So how often have you seen or heard of this?

Somebody is very excited about learning a language.

And boy, I'm going to learn Spanish.

I'm going to learn Chinese.

And they start off very excited and motivated.

But you see them a couple months later or a year later and they just gave up.

They quit because they saw small changes.

They couldn't really see any tangible results in the beginning.

So to make a meaningful difference, our habits, we need to persist long enough to take or long enough to break through this plateau of latent potential.

So persistence is very critical at this point in language learning.

And it is actually the difference between what you think or expect should happen.

And hey, what is actually happening in your life or in your language learning journey that you really can't see?

So the lesson she learned was that it pays off to work on your language and the results will show later.

So don't get consumed or caught up in looking for huge benefits or improvement in the very beginning.

Just be patient. You will see the results.

They will come. And here I want to give you a personal experience of my language learning process and what I've learned.

I speak with a friend of mine.

I call him a friend.

We met through conversation exchange.

And we speak once a week for an hour and a half, 45 minutes in English and 45 minutes in Spanish.

So I help him with English.

He helps me with Spanish.

And his name is Ricardo.

And I appreciate our sessions that we have every week.

But we talked about this type of thing.

And we were talking as interesting.

I say, hey, Ricardo, I can tell that you are improving.

Your English is improving.

And he told me, yes, and I could see your Spanish is improving.

And it's something that I cannot see.

Sometimes I feel that my Spanish is not improving.

And he feels that maybe his English is not improving.

Maybe as much as he thinks it is.

So the point I want to make is other people can see your improvement maybe better than you can see your own improvement because they are looking at it from a different perspective or point of view than you see it.

And a lot of times we are our own worst enemy.

We are our worst critic at times.

The lesson nine and the last lesson that Lydia learned when she was learning Swahili when she was 29 years old.

And she said the lesson that she learned there was the beginnings or the beginning of learning a language are always difficult.

But don't give up. So you see there is a pattern going on here.

Don't give up. And finally she went over the four pillars to learn a language.

Pillar number one or pillars like a key point or thing we need to do.

Number one is to have fun.

Two is to have contact with the language.

Is that reading, speaking, listening?

And she said interestingly enough she spends about one hour a day on a language which I thought was thought she would be spending more than that.

So reading could be magazines, books, newspapers, speaking.

Find somebody to speak with through italki or conversation exchange or maybe some meetup groups.

And listening podcasts like this.

I listen to podcasts in Spanish.

I have four podcasts on my phone that I try to listen to.

I like to also listen to a lot of YouTube videos or watch and listen to YouTube videos in Spanish.

And also I am watching a movie on Netflix in Spanish.

It's a series called Las Clavablanca.

So two have contact with the language.

Three have successful and effective methods on how are you going to apply and implement the system or plan that you're going to use to learn the language.

And of course four is have a plan or a system to learn a language.

So what exactly are you going to do?

Then how are you going to implement that?

And I'll close this episode by telling you kind of what I do.

And this works for me.

It may not work for you.

But I try to speak with...

I have three people that I speak with that are native Spanish speakers.

So between the three people, I try to speak at least three to five times a week.

Sometimes it's one hour sessions or hour and a half session.

Two, I read a Spanish book or novel.

I don't read that necessarily every day.

But I try to read maybe three nights a week for at least about 30 minutes.

It's not that long.

The third thing I do is I watch a Spanish Netflix movie.

But I may only do this maybe once a week or twice a week.

So I may try to watch one episode a week.

And because each episode is about 40 minutes, but since it's somewhat difficult for me that it takes me maybe two hours to watch the movie and I have to use subtitles.

If not, I won't be able to understand much.

But by listening and reading the subtitles and watching the movie and the context, I can pretty much follow what's going on.

And then I take notes of vocabulary and different words that I may not know.

The fourth thing I like to do is listen to podcasts, like I say.

And I may listen to five different episodes a week.

A lot of times I'll do this when I'm working outside or walking my dogs or taking a walk or working around the house.

And the fifth thing, like I said, I watch YouTube videos and I pretty much do this every day because I just find it interesting and fun.

So that's the important thing.

Find something you like to watch.

So I like to watch YouTube videos from people about, hey, everyday life in Mexico.

Of course, these are in Spanish.

Or there's a young lady that lives in Venezuela.

I'm kind of curious.

Hey, what's going on in Venezuela right now?

So she can give you a point of view of a person living there.

Also, YouTube videos about life in Colombia, videos about, hey, retiring in Spanish speaking countries like Mexico or Panama, or videos about people that are traveling.

Say one guy was riding a motorcycle from Alaska all the way down to Chile and he was giving his experience.

So these are things that you can do to help in your language learning journey.

So that's what I wanted to talk to you about.

So I hope you found this episode interesting.

You learned something.

Again, use this podcast as a listening comprehension tool to practice your listening.

So I hope you enjoyed this, as I say, this Learn Everyday English podcast.

Also, I would love to hear from you and what you thought of this episode.

Also, if you have any questions for me, and if you have any suggestions or specific topics you would like me to discuss on this program, I've heard that maybe phrasal verbs is a topic that a lot of people would want to learn a little bit more about and have questions on.

And I know that is a very difficult subject matter in English.

So again, just go to the Learn Everyday English webpage or the end on the homepage.

And at the bottom of the page, there's a contact form.

So fill that out. Send me a message and just say hi.

Let me know how you're doing.

That's it for now, I think.

So be sure to check out our upcoming episodes.

And thanks for listening.

And we'll check you later.

So goodbye.

[Nine Practical Lessons from a Polyglot: Strategies for Language Mastery]-[Episode 3 - Language Learning Lessons From a Polyglot]

📋 Summary

Insights from a Polyglot: Mastering the Language Learning Journey

Core Lessons for Language Learners

The Four Pillars of Success

Conclusion: Personalizing Your Path

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript