On A Mission

Growing up, I remember my mom learning English at a language school for the beginning portion of my life. I still remember her coming home with a bunch of notecards that have the different conjugations of irregular verbs so that she can study them at any time throughout the day. The rote repetition of these verbs over and over again should've proven to be helpful, right? Well, she couldn't graduate the class and never got her certificate.

I remember in middle school, we were tasked with choosing a language to learn through Rosetta Stone. While everyone in my school chose to learn Spanish, I already spoke Spanish at home (my parents are from Mexico). So, I chose to learn French instead. And I stuck with French from middle school, through high school. This is when I fell in love with learning languages and wanted to learn as many languages as possible.

That's when I realized that the traditional way to learn languages isn't optimal, and actually extremely slow for people who need the language for a job or for traveling. My mom took English classes since she was in high school, and still didn't feel confident enough in the language when she came to the U.S.. I took French classes for 6 years and still couldn't get past the beginning portions of the language. Regardless, both of us were at the top of our language classes, and yet the system has failed or lied to us in some sort of way.

The Issue

I like to believe that at some point during our lives, we have considered learning a new language either because we work with someone who uses that language, we want to impress others, we want to travel solo across the world, or we seek new job opportunities. Personally, I like learning languages because I want to travel the world and connect with locals. However, the school system doesn't focus on usable language and just makes it feel like you are learning the language when in reality all you learn is how to say "The duck eats purple grapes". There are three main issues with learning a language through the school, 1) the lack of useful vocabulary, 2) the overemphasis on grammar, 3) the loss of motivation.

The Duck Eats Purple Grapes

First, the lack of useful vocabulary. As I mentioned above, the school system focuses on teaching vocabulary that you almost never or rarely use in the real world. Let's be honest, how often do you use colors or clothing items in your day to day language? Yet this always seems to be the first things that you learn in most language classrooms. Wouldn't it be better to learn vocabulary that you actually use, like school or work-related vocabulary, relationships, and locations you go to frequently? Sure, you learn these eventually in the classroom, but I fear that at that point, students have already lost the motivation to learn the language.

When I started my deep dive into learning languages from polyglots and "language gurus", one of the most common ideas that is mentioned is the use of the Pareto Principle: the idea that 80% of the effects comes from 20% of the causes. In the case of vocabulary, 80% of the language you use on a daily basis comes from 20% of all the words in the dictionary of the target language. This comes out to learning the top 1000 words of the language which amounts to 80% of the spoken language. Taking this approach to learning vocabulary is more applicable, and can actually be customized to be the top 1000 words that you use the most. This tailoring of the vocabulary list one learns helps motivate the student to use the language and speak about things that are more relevant in their lives rather than about a duck that eats purple grapes.

I Am, You Are, He/She Is, We Are All Tired Of This

Secondly, the overemphasis on learning the grammar of a language by textbook kills the motivation and the joy of learning languages in the first place. Let me preface by saying that learning grammar is important in all languages, but there is a time, place, and manner to learn grammar. Schools love to shove grammar down the students' throats because its the most academic portion of learning language and the easiest thing that schools are able to grade. However, when you start with a new language, and 80% of the language you are learning is the same verb conjugated in a million ways, it can feel daunting to learn so many rules and also discouraging to realize your vocabulary is not very diverse.

Stephen Krashen suggests that learning grammar is a natural process as long as one listens to what he calls comprehensible input. This is input that is slightly above the learner's current abilities, and when I say input, it means any sort of media that you are intaking such as reading, videos, and music. The focus on comprehensible input is less on learning the grammar, but rather understanding what is being said. The best way to practice comprehensible input is to repeatedly listen or read to the same content over and over again until the message of whatever media you are using is about 80% comprehensible. Then you move on to some other content and repeat the process. Overtime, although the learner is not directly learning the grammar rules, the grammar rules will naturally stick. One may not understand why or how it works, but the overall message is properly conveyed regardless. One can start learning the grammar rules after they feel confident enough with portraying messages if they truly want.

Personally, I don't understand some of the grammar rules in Spanish even though I've been speaking it since I was young, but I can still communicate and get my message across, so I think the grammar portion of language learning isn't as important or crucial. But it all depends on one's reason to learn the language, so you be the judge of whether you want to learn the grammar or not.

Why Am I Learning French Again?

Finally, the school system is built with an emphasis on grades rather than learning. This is a whole different article I will be writing at some point, but back to language learning. The academic pressure of doing well in tests, quizzes, and presentations for the language learning class undermines the process of learning the language. In addition, this pressure could taint the initial motivation to learning the language in the first place. I know that when I started learning French, I wanted to travel to France and be able to communicate with the locals there to have the best beignets. However, as more quizzes and grades came along, I lost that motivation and started learning French because I needed a good grade to graduate. Although this isn't a bad reason to learn a language, it didn't motivate me to try to use the language outside of the classroom environment. And unfortunately, to be able to learn a language as fast as possible, one key ingredient is constant immersion.

The more one surrounds themselves in the language and attempts to utilize it on a daily basis, the faster they'll see progress. The "schoolification" of language learning doesn't push students to do this outside of the school environment. Another issue is burnout, where the language learning journey starts to become a drag because it doesn't seem like fun anymore. The learner sits at their desk practicing flashcards over and over again, and would much rather be playing games or hanging with friends instead. The trick for this is to tailor language learning to be fun for you. Find a game lobby that uses your language, learn a song in the target language to play on the guitar, read a fun book in the target language, watch movies and videos in your target language. This helps keep you motivated, and also reminds you of the primary reason you started to learn this particular language.

My Mission

I've tried using these and many more strategies to learn various other languages such as Korean, Vietnamese, and Italian. Have I become fluent in any of these? Nope. But the biggest issue is consistency: carving out time every single day to deliberately practice and learn the language. So that's where I come in with a possible solution to this problem: I am going to be documenting my progress online.

I have just been accepted to a mission trip to Indonesia this July, so I have exactly 96 days starting today to learn Indonesian as much as possible. So today starts my 96 day journey to learn Indonesian as much as possible. I will be following Ameer Corro's Road Trip Method of learning a new language (check out his video). Long story short, we have 90-minute language learning sessions, where the first 30 minutes will be dedicated to input (vocab, guided course, or immersion) and the last 60 minutes will be dedicated to output (writing, story speaking, conversation).

Let's see what my progress is like, how consistent I stay, and if I am actually able to use what I learn when I fly to Indonesia in July. I'll be posting updates on my YouTube account (@HectorLearnsLanguages), so if you want to follow along or support, check it out! In the end, this is more for me, so I hope it works.

So this is my mission, and I hope you embark on yours if you've contemplating it for a while now.