Robin MacPherson: Developing the method

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Actual Fluency podcast. This is episode 45, and today I'm joined again by Robin MacPherson. Robin was a part of episodes 9 and 10, and if you haven't listened to those already, I strongly recommend you do. It was one of the best received episodes, or the both of them were very well received, and we get into a lot of topics about learning languages, methods, uh sort of feeling, how you feel about everything.

So today, I brought him back, and the reason I brought him back is because uh he had contact me not too long ago about the fact that he had sort of changed his mind on the method. What he meant to say was that he had developed his method further, and he was not really doing the same things that as he was before. So, I thought it would be interesting to take a talk with uh Robin and listen to how the method gets developed, the language learning method.

And as always, you know, we're not trying to, or at least I'm not, trying to sell you on one particular method. I hope that the purpose or the motive comes across that we're just trying to show you various ways of doing it, and today Robin and I are going to share a lot of pointers about methods and our own experiences. And actually, uh a big reason I also want to talk to Robin is because he's improved his French dramatically. I mean, basically last time I talked to him, he couldn't really speak that well, or maybe even uh limited sentences. But now, uh he just put up a video, and I'll link to it from the show notes, which you can always find on actualfluency.com the episode number, so in this case /45 or 45. Uh basically, he's improved his French dramatically, and in in today's episode, we're kind of diving into the changes he has done to make that happen.

Um another announcement I just wanted to make before I let you loose with the interview with Robin MacPherson is that the podcast is ending. Yes, it's the sad announcement, but don't worry, it's only season 1 that's ending. Uh as for season 2, uh it'll be coming up shortly, and the 50th episode will be the last of season 1. And um if you're wondering why this episode is a little bit short on effects, uh or the typical announcer that I have, it's because the computer I used to edit the episodes with is dead, and um unfortunately, it can't be saved.

But what I've decided to do instead is to say call this season 1 over and then work on season 2. And uh I'm I have some great plans for season 2 to improve uh not only the audio quality, but also the quality of the guest, the quality of sort of the interviews. I have some improvements that I think I can make, and if you have any ideas, questions, comments about season 2, feel free to send them to me. Uh you can find the contact page on actualfluency.com or email chris@actualfluency.com and I'll I'll find it.

And um, you know, now that the computer died, I'm kind of in a bit of a tough spot, so what I thought was, why don't I do the um, why don't I offer you the listener to be part of season 2 and sort of support the show in the way you prefer. So what I'm actually going to do is set up a Indiegogo campaign, a crowdfunding campaign, and then I'll give you some awesome awesome rewards for supporting the show. But that's coming uh very soon. It's uh we're only at episode 45, so there's still a few episodes to go, and I'm incredibly excited about finishing this season, but also moving into the second season where hopefully the episodes will only get better, and we can make this the number one language learning podcast in the world.

You know, I'm so grateful for you listening in today, and I hope you enjoy the interview with Robin MacPherson.

All right, we're back. And this time, I've got a repeat guest. It's uh Robin MacPherson.

So a lot of things have happened in terms of my sort of general life track, but also a lot of development. I think I've definitely matured a lot. Um, not only in my life but in my language learning and that has brought around a lot of changes in my language learning methodology and my practices uh particularly since we last talked.

And the I guess the problem when doing a podcast is a lot of you people listening out there, you probably maybe found the podcast later and then went back to listen to sort of Robin's uh episode. And that does it doesn't mean that the methodology that Robin was talking about last time was bad or like that it somehow worked against your language learning or anything. It's just a basic development that you kind of have to try things to figure out what works for you.

Um, in terms of what I was doing before, um, I think before I had a pretty I had a pretty good idea of a sort of general method and like a structure, you know? So I talked about how I would, you know, start off with like a general book, you know, just basically trying to get some general knowledge. Uh, you know, get get some basic vocabulary, understand the grammar a little bit and then I went straight into reading, you know? I talked about how I did a reading phase. Um, and some certain things and then I had a sort of a a listening phase and so I had a sort of skeleton, but I think I was actually still quite confused, um, with the with the particulars of a lot of what I was doing before.

Um, for example, with reading's been a big challenge for me with French. French has been the language I focused on the most since we last spoke. And um, it's a big challenge for me. Like I I, you know, no matter what I tried, um, you know, I read The Little Prince and it was uh it went really well for me. When I started trying to read novels and literature and um other kinds of books, I really struggled a lot and I and I found that I switched I So I still was reading, which which is what I said last time, but I was I kept switching my exact methodology, uh for how I was how was I tackling these books, how was I reading them? And it just sort of but it wasn't kind of working. I felt at the time. I felt like what okay, why can't I still not read a book? Because that was my what I was gauging my progress with. Could I or could I not read a book with no problem? Which I think was kind of wrong.

But what happened was over time, I just kept changing and changing. Like I I basically just trying new things, trying new things. I would read a book uh one way, I would try it, I would, you know, I would tackle it, look at the words, then I would it would be too hard, so I'd change book, change method. What I realized is over realized over time is that as I kept sort of changing what I was really doing was developing my method. Does that make sense?

And so and so what I realized is, I mean, you discussed this a couple times, is that I realized that what people talk about as being the most efficient method, or the most effective method, I realized that that isn't actually, in my opinion, the most important question. Um, and I talked to you about, you know, I thought maybe I'll write a blog post one day called the the most inefficient method of language learning. Because what I realized is the fact is a lot of people, um, in the language learning community that are a bit more, like, especially the informed people that make videos and such, they talk about how, you know, looking at words is is a bad practice sometimes, you know? Or uh, you know, a lot of people talk about extensive reading. And so this is kind of how I was being influenced, but I realized the fact is, I love looking at words. You know? I love it. I love it.

And I, you know, my my my drama method, which has worked very, very well for me in Japanese before, you know, involves