Robin MacPherson: How I Learn Languages (2/2)

All right, guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Actual Fluency Podcast. This is episode 10. And as always, you can find the show notes, links, any resources that we mentioned during the show. You can find that over at actualfluency.com/10. So the big 10, I'm excited for it.

And today I don't I don't want to talk too much before the interview segment because this is a continuation of the discussion I had with Robin McFerson from last week. So I'm I'm sure you guys are eager to get the uh continuation of that interview, so I'm not going to talk too much. All I want to say is just thank you so much for your support. And uh if you wouldn't mind leaving a review on the iTunes page or a rating just, you can probably just rate it. You should go to actualfluency.com/itunes. Then I'm super excited about that.

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And without further ado, let me bring you the continuation of last week's interview with Robin McFerson. If you had to learn a new language, a new foreign language tomorrow, you knew nothing about. I I actually asked this question most weeks if I remember it. But uh I want to ask you, how would you do it? You know, what what kind of materials or routines would you employ? You talked about phases before, and was that something you got out of studying all these uh Internet polyglots and and their methods?

So if I'm focusing on French, like I have been, I I was focusing on French, but I was also in school. I was writing two graduation thesis. I was doing Japanese and Spanish. But I decided that I would commit um when I was walking to class and walking back every day, I would do an audio course for Italian. Oh. So that. And I just said, and I committed to doing it every day. And that's something I'm good at. I think is that I'm when I commit to something, I I'm quite good at sticking to it. And so, because I know from experience what this would do.

And so what happened was, I ended up doing about two or three, you know, classes a day uh instead of one on this audio course, um which was Pimsleur. Um once again, I'm not going to going to go into too much on in this discussion about which things unless you want me to, just because I think there's so many of these so many videos out there about that, you know.

And so, I learned I went through all three of these courses without having no effect to my um my French or the languages. And the the whole reason why I did that, and then I switched to Assimil. So, now I'm doing Assimil still. I'm all I'm doing is 15 minutes a day now. But what that does is that I'm gradually building up a sort of fundamental, foundational knowledge in a new language with very little effort. Um and what that does is that then when I decide to then switch my focus language to Italian, for example, I will have such a a huge head start um as if where I just sort of stuck to And what I find is that had I just stuck to French and not done the Italian, I don't find that my French would have actually changed that much because of the way I structured it. You know what I mean? Does that make sense?

Um so basically what I do is I have my phase one is just I'm I just call it beginner phase. Where all I all I need is a beginner textbook. Okay. Um where I'm just getting exposure. Now, there are other things that go on here. Um I need to I have a I like this analogy of I find that people often talk about with language learning what activities to do. Read lots and lots and lots. Listen lots and lots and lots. You know, like, or whatever it is, you know, speak lots of words. But I don't think enough really gets told about like how to do it.

And the reason why this is important is like a when I was researching sort of exercise and diet. A guy was talking about how if you do a push-up, which is the same activity, just like reading, just like listening or speaking, the way that you sort of think about it inside your body can completely change the workout. If you put pressure on the outside of your arms and sort of tense those muscles, you can get a very good workout on your sort of shoulder and upper back muscles. Whereas if you tense your abdomen. So, what's going on inside is really making a big difference. And I think that a lot of people just they they watch these guys on YouTube and oh, wow, I'll just do loads of listening. And uh and it doesn't always work. And so, Yeah. I think it's important to sort of think about what what you're actually doing.

So, yeah, so I get a beginner course, I go through that. And while I'm going through this beginner course, this is very important for me is I want to be finding music, films, and movies. Now, this is not for learning at this stage. This is for motivation because this is the stage that I want to be getting interested. So, I want to I will watch movies with English subtitles for me. Right. My whatever new languages. No shame there because I'm not watching it at this stage to really get a whole lot of language exposure. I'm getting cultural exposure. I'm trying to get myself excited. If I get into a show where I'm like, oh my God, this is great. That's that's excellent for the next for the coming stages. Does that make sense? So, Um so, yeah, and then I'm also shopping for a book. This is a really important thing. My favorite so far has been The Little Prince. Have you heard of that?

And the reason why and what I do now in the reading phase, once I've gotten a little bit of exposure, I've gone through my beginner book, um I should I just want to quickly mention, I tend to not finish the books, by the way. Um I find that with Assimil is a good example, that by the time I get to they have like 110 lessons on average, and by the time I get to lesson 80, 90, I find I'm already I'm already there. I don't need to continue. Right. Because I'll get more out of phase two. Um Other sources of course. I think some people I think some people are just they're hellbent on finishing every book they start. Um which isn't not a bad quality, but I just think that a lot of times you'll you'll know and you probably know this, you know, you just get that feeling like I'm ready to move on. Right. You know.

Um so, reading phase. So, what what I do and this is super really important. Um because Japanese the way I learned Japanese was full on. It was the brute force method that people talk about. I was Anki mania. It was ridiculous. I mean, and and I know you're a fan of Memrise and I'm not saying that in general this is bad, but I use Anki was like my source Right. for learning for a long time. I mean, oh my God. I mean, that was what I spent sometimes nine hours. I mean, it was incredible. I mean, and yeah, you know what? It works if you do nine hours a day and you just, you know, and you do all the things.

But so, uh what happened though and this is so, so important, I think, um is that I got to the stage where like I just couldn't watch a drama without pausing it every five seconds to look up every word I didn't know in the Japanese subtitles. Wow. If I read a book, I just and this is really important. And Anthony Lauder alluded to this sort of sort of in his presentation, um which in regards to sort of what makes polyglots different than poly nots, you know. Um is it's you lose, I find the ability or it gets it gets rusty to guess. Right. Because you become so used to either being able to look things up or just wanting to look every single word up. And it's a very dangerous actually. And I and it it hindered me with my French learning for a little while and it it took me a little while to sort of get now, now it's I'm fine, but it took me a little while to get out of that habit. Um Right.

So, this is why I'm saying that because what I now do with the reading phase is I read I get a beginner I get a regular level native speaker intensive book and I just read it. Now, I do it two times. Um without any dictionary anything for the most part. Maybe if I'm super, super curious, I'll look it up. Now, I know that I heard I know that you may not agree with this, I'm not sure. So, feel free to uh to yell at me. But um the reason is that this for me uh and this is why it's important to get a book that's of a a good level for you, not too hard. Um and is that it gets you sort of it's a good start on being able to guess. Um and getting used to the language and getting a lot of it it gets it done quickly because if you just read and once again, I realize this is a bit controversial. Um if you just read through and it once as long as it's not too, too hard. If you just read through it and just just make your goal, I just want to understand the general story the first time. Right.

What I found was and this is obviously easier with uh related languages, I found that the second time I went through the book, um I understood so much more. And I I really felt like I had a pretty good grasp. And then the third time I did go through the book um using a dictionary to look up stuff that I wanted. And I made a glossary. And I just, you know, but the point is, I didn't spend too much time on the nitty-gritty. I just I just wanted to get exposure. Right.

Whereas, yeah, in the short term, if you just plug them all into your flashcard thing, which is useful in my opinion in in in ways, but not in this way for me. Then you might learn more words in the short term, but you're going to be having to keep it's harder to keep them up. Um if you do this method, you it's this is why it's important at this phase is that you will find that after you finally go through that third time, not only will you be so happy because you've finally you've finished the book, the third time. It's great to get momentum, too. It's great to actually finish the book. Um Of course. And you will just those words, all those words that you've seen so many times, they will stick in your head. And that's a great way of getting that quote-unquote high-frequency vocabulary. More natural, too.

It is. And here's the other thing that it does is that and and you know I know this is uh discussed, but it's it's so important. The my only qualm with the way that some people and the way that I used Anki is that and or Memrise. Um is when you when you use it as your sort of sole source of of learning because and as we as we most any seasoned language learner knows, I mean, words don't just translate. They don't. I mean, and a ton of words have so many meanings and so many different contexts and different, you know. And you just can't even if you get a flashcard that someone else made and you know, a good example, I like to give examples all the time. Um is like the verb in French, which you could it translates so many ways. It's kind of like hold, take, whatever. But it could be you could say which is like to to hold a conversation. So it's like in this case it's like hold, but you could also say like, which is like, okay, let's go, like, all right. You could also say if someone says I bet you $10 you can't do that, you could say, which is like taken. And there's all these different ways to use this verb. And like there's no way that you would even if you had a flashcard that had all those different meanings, there's no way you'd understand how to use them. Right.

And what happens is I can tell you exactly where I learned each one of those examples. And I had the same thing in Japanese because when you learn from content and doing it this way, those examples stick in your head. And so when I had homework in Japan, I literally would just write down. I either would remember it perfectly and I would just recite. We'd have a grammar point, right? And it would be like, use this grammar point. I just I could remember tons of sentences from dramas. Um and if I couldn't remember them exactly, I knew exactly which episode it was and whereabouts it was because I'd spent so much time with these dramas, you know. Right. So, anyway, I just find that you get these this it's like an anchor, you know. Um and when I was using Anki as my main substance, I it was just I was I'd spent too much time on a white screen with with a few characters in the middle. And it's just like being in a big vacuum. There's no nothing to anchor your knowledge to, you know.

The benefit is that it's, you know, it's community, of course, like Anki, it's community-driven. So, if you choose a a popular language like Japanese or French, a lot of people will have created these ingenious memes that you can use if you can't find one on your own. Uh if you're choosing a little bit of a more obscure language, of course, it's more difficult. And I must say some Russian words are just impossible to connect to anything. So it's just brute-forcing. Um Yeah. But that's uh that's kind of the end of my uh Memrise uh plug of the week. But you see you see how that that works with the anchors.

Because if you then let's say you take a a drama, okay, I love this as a good example. So, not only So, when you when I learn something from a Japanese drama, and Japanese is a great if you learn Japanese and you're not using dramas or, you know, then you're missing out because it's such a great resource. If you've if I learn that, not only do I know the character's story, I know the character's personality, I've connected with him or her. I've got the story of the overall episode which the sentence is appearing in. Then I've also got the overall context of the whole series of episodes. And it's such a much deeper and richer level of context for me that the the anchor that I get is for me is ten times larger. And it and I remember these things so, so, so well uh when I do it that way.

And and also there's the I mean, Japanese is a good example where there are some scenarios where like this uh I don't want to get too technical with like specifics of languages, but it's like um I learned a phrase in that uh I I'm going to I'll just really briefly explain this so it's not too technical. But, you know, there's a word in Japanese which means which is omo, which means to think, okay? And there's different ways you can say it. One of the ways is like uh to say how you you can say do omoi mas ka, which means what do you think? Or you could say do motte no. Okay, the only difference really is that in for for the basics is that there one's sort of formal, one's informal. Right.

However, I learned this phrase, do motte no, what you know, what do you think about whatever from dramas. I learned it from several things. And this is where the idea of making mistakes being important comes in, is that when I was in Japan, I would somebody would uh put cabbage in their food and I'd be like, oh, do motte no, you know, cabbage, do motte no. And they would just look at me weird. Right. Like what? Like, um that sounds kind of I mean, it makes sense, but it sounds kind of strange. And I made this mistake several times to where I had to ask, you know, like, what why is it weird? And so they thought about it long and hard. We realized that do motte no is specifically for when you're talking about your feelings towards a towards somebody. Wow. Like, do you like this person? Like, And I look back and I realized that every scenario I'd seen in dramas was these was either two little girls or two high school girls talking, what do you think about? You know. And I realized and it was so and how bizarre is that? And um as far as what I was saying about cabbages and, you know, like ingredients of food. It's like I know you love food, but, you know. Right.

Um but this is a great example of how like I would get the the the combination of making mistakes, which is another important phase and um and you having this drama as huge anchor of wide context. That is what helped me get to that. And I I've heard so many I I've almost never heard another foreigner actually use that correctly. Right. Um I'm not saying I'm the only one, but it's just it is it's just and I think that those are the things that you cannot learn sometimes from just a a flashcard. But once again, that's not to say I don't use them.

But then then we get to this sort of autonomous stage. When I say autonomous, I'm talking more about where I'm able you're able to start learning from real text without much help. So, you can if you have a basic dictionary and things like that, you can pretty much guess the meaning, you know, like uh you can figure out things like, oh, well, that's the dictionary says this, but it probably doesn't mean that, you know. Um this is what I will use LingQ. Steve Kaufman's going to love this because I know he knows you know. I know that uh he gets he gets some flak for that for you for promoting it all time. But, you know, I I do I use LingQ. Um for for this purpose, but there's I know there's other things out there. Anthony Loder once mentioned one you can make yourself for free, but it's just a bit more work. It is, yeah.

Um but yeah, I use I what I do is then I start I just go I go nuts then. Now, like this is like sort of my phase three where I'm still it's more it's my mass reading stage then. I'm still it's my mass it's vocab acquisition stage for me. Okay. Um I find that I don't if I was just doing French or Russian, for example, since you're doing Russian right now, uh then I would also do lots lots of listening and stuff like that. But um the I think the bulk of my time at this stage for learning is actually reading because I find that um the biggest issue with listening to content is not often it's not always actually about not having a vocab. It's actually about you're not good enough at listening. Right. Um you know.

And so, I just find that when I I, you know, the idea of comprehensive input, which gets thrown out around a lot, you know, you need to understand a very high percentage of what's going on to really get a lot out of listening. Now, I'm not in regards to acquisition for in my opinion. Uh and I. So, this is why I don't think it's best I I do it some and I challenge myself and I you know, in French, I found a lot you know, The Little Einstein's kids show that I was watching, you know. Well, yeah. Just to get myself a little bit of, you know. And then I would also watch the movie. So, it's important to challenge yourself, but for me, at this stage, I do lots of reading and I um and I like I like having the podcast. That's why I like LingQ. Um the only thing is that a lot of the or a lot of them have kind of bad audio quality. So, I just sort of fish out the ones that have good ones. Um but it's it's not in Japanese I had no I didn't use LingQ. I found some excellent, you know, uh audio podcasts. So, it's really just about whatever's available for that language.

But, you know, I do lots and lots of reading and I um and this is the stage where I would use a bit more of Anki and a bit more Memrise because now I've gotten that big base um in from doing the previous phase. Does that make sense? So, uh but what I will put into Anki though, because I don't know if you agree here or not, uh I think we all have the experience where some words just stick. They just they just you see it once and it just sticks. I don't know, do you have that experience?

Um but yeah, I'll just go through and so I don't bother putting the words into things like Anki or what etc. if they if they're ones that just kind of stuck with me. Or ones that I at least I can kind of tell. Um because if you do lots of, you know, lots of um reading or or listening, like Anthony Loder mentioned in his thing and you you will see these words over and over again, which is the whole point. So I try to spend as little time as I can on those because uh but what I do put into things like Anki are the are A, words that just that I I can just tell, you know, you just know when you see a word sometimes like this word is going to be tough for me. Um and I also put collocations. I put collocations, I put groups of words, I put phrases. I put there I put a lot more of phrases and things into into things like Anki or if I was going to do Memrise. Um because for me, those are almost more important for me to because I'm going to get I'm going to get the words, but I want to remember how to say like, oh, how should I say etc. I want to learn I want to remember these things. Collocations are so, so important. Um And I think that collocations or those kind of things get kind of brushed over a little bit too much. Um Do you find that in your study? I mean, how do you tend to put a lot of those into your Memrise decks?

And so, and then to the next phase then is where I'm going to then I'm going to transition over to a lot of I'm going to keep doing a lot of reading, but I'm going to do lots and lots of listening then because now after I've done a certain amount of reading and acquired lots of vocabulary. And of course, I am still watching films. I am still listening to podcasts. And if it's LingQ, if it's LingQ or whatever, I can still listen a lot. Um is then I'm going to I have two phases for my listening.

The first stage is where I'm I'm still challenging myself. I'm still watching shows etc. But I'm going to start to try to get things that do have the transcript. So, with French, a great example is there's a YouTube a comedy channel called Norman. Okay. And it's this funny guy. He's so he's hilarious. He has like millions of views on all his videos. And he's it's so much slang. It's so many cultural references. And so, this is the kind of thing where I so I had to have a a friend who spoke French and so I I went through with her. So, what I would do is I would go through and we would transcribe it together and she would explain all the slang. Once again, of course, this is something you would have to have that luxury of having um an native speaker or someone an advanced speaker. I'll go through that and so what I'll do is she'll explain it all to me. I'll I'll go through it. I'll put it into LingQ or whatever I wanted to do. And I'll learn the words. I'll I'll read it a few times. And then I'll almost force myself to be able to understand the audio. Right.

Because then I know that I know the words. Okay. So, because I've just I've gone through it. Anything I don't understand from that point on is all down to my listening ability. Right. So it helps me isolate my listening ability because I think it's hard to do that. Um and it took me a long time to figure out how could I do that. That's how I isolate my listening ability from my vocab. Does that make sense? And so, it's a really I find it's really good. I know if you do let's say and I could understand about 2% of that episode the first time I did it. Um I found actually I knew most of the words. Right. It was just because he was speaking so bloody quickly and uh you know. And so, yeah, so it and by doing three, four, five, even six of those episodes, they're so funny anyway. And when you're done with it, you're so proud. I'll be honest. I'll be honest with you. I've shown like eight people that speak French those videos and I'll watch them with them just proud that I can understand them too. You know. Uh but it it improves your listening ability exponentially. It's it's fantastic for me.

And then after that point, it's kind of just sort of um the next listening phase for me and just sort of mass input phase is then I'm just I then I am. I'm watching movies. I'm watching films. I don't care if it's got English subtitles because there are some benefits for that. I don't care if it's got no subtitles. I do find actually one thing with Japanese I learned, which is an important point, is that I actually think it's a lot better for your listening ability to not have any subtitles. Because I find that I tend to be reading a lot, especially with Japanese or a character-based language, or even maybe Russian for you because it isn't your sort of um native alphabet, you know. Um you tend to be focusing a lot more on the reading aspect, I find. Do you find the same thing?

And then in between there, I also should mention that like on for example, during there, and it's different for people, I I think it's important to speak to yourself. Right. I do think it's I think it's great. And I think the problem is that people try it and they didn't like they it's awkward. Right. It's almost like talking to a new new person. It's which is quite a funny thing. But it's just but you get better at it. You it really is almost like getting to know yourself because you start to you find you get much more comfortable over time. Yeah, you can start by doing simple exercises, talking about what's going on around you, describing it. And we we know that's very limited.

But you will find that you know, and this is how I get to the there's a big question that comes up a lot. How do you start thinking in a foreign language? And I know that that question's sort of the way it's phrased is kind of not really good because it makes it seem like, you know, a few different guys have said, well, you shouldn't be thinking at all. Right. But I know what they I know what the question's meant to to ask, I think. And for me, talking to yourself is what does that for me. Because um I find that that's when I find that after I'm sitting French, I realize that my inside voice, you know, you have that sort of inside voice, it's in French. And I'll suddenly come across a word that I don't I don't know and that's when I realize, oh, I'm actually thinking in French, you know. So, that's how I do that.

But not only that, I've got a series. I got some really exciting stuff uh for me, it's exciting. Uh I'm I got a a comedy series coming out. Uh which is uh I'm hoping will be filmed um I'm going to try to do all of this to the best quality I can. Um and all of this is supposed to be language learner content. So, it's all stuff that's supposed to be um for language learners. Um either just as to enjoyment, entertainment, study material.

Um and other than that, I'm also I have a much more artistic, sort of abstract line of videos coming out, which are which are sort of stories about the different languages that I speak and such. Um which are just quick four to five minutes shorts where it's, you know, it's it's much more artistic. It's not really a show format. And then lastly, I'm actually not sure if I want to give this one away or not. But uh I have another a couple of exciting projects. So, you my you can expect a lot of content hopefully on my channel. It's just a matter of time. I think.