And before I get into those , I just want to talk about two myths. [mɪθ] 神话 I want to dispel /dispel/ 驱散 two myths。
The 2 Things that Really Don't Matter.
一、你需要天才？Talent Zoe came from Australia, went to Holland/['hɑlənd/荷兰, was trying to learn Dutch./dʌtʃ/ 荷兰语
struggling extremely, extremely... a great deal. and finally people were saying: "You're completely useless," "your're not talented,""give up", "you're a waste of time" and she was ver, very depressed.
And then she came across these five principles, she moved to Brazil /brəˈzɪl/巴西 and she applied them， and in six months she was fluent in Portuguese,/ˌpɔːrtʃuˈɡiːz/ 葡萄牙语。 so talent doesn't matter. 不是天才的问题。
二、Immersion per se , /ɪˈmɜːrʒn/ 沉浸 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. /ˈwɛstərnərz/ 西方人 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 an English.
Immersion per se does not work. Why? Because a drowning man cannot learn to swim. 一个正在溺水的人学不会游泳。
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.
5 Principles of Rapid Language Acquisition /ˌækwɪˈzɪʃn/ 掌握
What are the five principles that you need to pay attention to ?
First the four words: Attention, Meaning , Relevance, Memory, and these interconnect in very , very important ways. Especially when you're talking about learning. 注意力、意义、相关性、记忆 和它们的内在关联。
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. (树皮破了） Another 50 metres, if you haven't been paying attention, you see this...（一个熊掌印） And at this point, you're paying attention.（一头熊）
And you've just learned that this (树皮破了) is important, it's relevant because it means this(一头熊），and anything that is related, any information related to your survival /sərˈvaɪvl/ 生存 is stuff that you're going to pay attention to and therefore you're going to remember it.
Information that helps achieve Personal Goals has relevance. (帮助人实现个人目标的信息具有相关性）
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, Tant's a tool.
I had a colleague many years ago, who went to night school; Tuesday night , Thursday night, two hours each time, praticing 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. 学习的第一天就去交流。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/raɪd/短途旅行 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/ˈfeɪʃl/ 面部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/əbˈzɔːrbd/吸收 it that night on the train, which brings us to the third principle.
When you first understand the message, then you will acquire/əˈkwaɪər/获得 the language unconsciously./ʌnˈkɑːnʃəsli/ 无意的
And this is really, really well documented now, it's something called comprehensible/ˌkɑːmprɪˈhensəbl/可以理解的 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 grammer and formal study. The green people are the ones who learned by comprehensible input.
So, comprehension works. Comprehension is key and language learning is not about accumulating/əˈkjuːmjəleɪtɪŋ/ 积累 lots of knowledge.
In many, many ways it's about physiological/ˌfɪziə'lɑdʒɪk/生理 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 the filter out the sounds of languages that we're not.
And if you can't hear it you won't understand it, if you cant't understand it you're not going to learn it. 所以首先你要能听到这些声音。so you actually have to be able to hear these sounds.
物理练习，说话带动肌肉， 脸部有43块肌肉。 you've got 43 muscles in your face. you have to coordinate/koʊˈɔːrdɪnət/ those in a way. that you make sounds that other people will understand.
你做一项运动，你的身体会疼，如果你脸疼，那你就做对了。if your face is hurting, you're doing it right.
And the final priciple is state. Psycho-physiological /ˈsaɪkoʊ/ 心理生理学 state. 如果你伤心、生气、担心、沮丧，你不要去学。Period/ˈpɪriəd/
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/ˈtɑːlərənt/容忍 of ambiguity./ˌæmbɪˈɡjuːəti/ .你必须学会容忍模糊不清
If you're one of those people who needs to understand 100 percent every word you're hearing , you will go nuts,(发疯） 因为你会一直沮丧，因为你不完美。 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, 你就会轻松，学得快。
7个行动 1. 多听 listen a lot， I call it brain soaking./breɪn ˈsoʊkɪŋ/ 浸泡脑子， You're listening to the rhythms, to patterns that repeat, 2. 先听懂Focus on getting the meaning FIRST 在听到words前。 不同于的postures mean. 肢体动作的意思
人类沟通是肢体沟通， you can also use patterns that you already know.
If you're a Chinese speaker of Mandarin and Cantonese and you go to Vietnam, /viˌɛtˈnɑm/ Vietnamese is about 30 percent Mandarin, 30 percent Cantonese. 如果你是说普通话和广东话的中国人，你去了越南，
3. Starting mixing 10个动词10名词 10形容词， 你就可以说 1000 different things.
Language is a creative process. Start mixing , get creative, have fun with it. it doesn't have to be perfect, just has to work.
4. focus on the core. (High Frequency Language) Any language is high frequency content. 任何语言是高频的内容， 英语中1000words， 覆盖了85%的内容。3000words gives 98% Coverage The rest is icing/结冰/ on the cake
开始学新语言的时候就要打开你的工具箱 第一周： 工具箱 How do you say that? I don't understand, repeat that please, what does that mean? all in your target language. 你怎么说
You're using it as a tool, making it useful to you.
it's relevant to learn other things about the language.
week 2-3, 简单的发音和名词动词形容词，你 要说： me, this, you ,that, give ,you know, hot, 像小孩一样的交流。
week 4 glue words /ɡluː wɜːrdz/ 粘词 aothough, but , therefore there are logical transformers that tie bits of a language together, allowing you to make more complex meaning, at that that point you're talking.
5. Get a Language parent
sometimes quite strange, sometimes very strange pronunciation
even when you're way off beat.
works to understand what you are saying does not correct mistakes confirms understanding by using correct language uses words the learner knows
6. Copy the Face 看本地人的发音脸部运动，let your unconscious mind absorb the rules, 看视频口型
7. Direct Connect to mental Images
通过 fire - 火 来记忆是低效的，通过 脑中的图 对应 fire （see 。。 smell smoke， hear the crackling, see the flames火焰 Same Box - Different Path
you go into that imagery and all of that memory come out with another pathway.
you come out of that pathway and you build it over time, you become more and more skilled at just connecting the new sounds
remember these are things under your control as the learner. 记住，作为学习者，这些都是你可以控制的。
Do them all and you're going to be fluent in a second language in six months.
