Why We Struggle Learning Languages | Gabriel Wyner | TEDxNewBedford

I was with the French. My situation was this: I was doing two master's degrees, one in singing and one in opera, so I had lessons six days a week. I had one free hour a day on the subway, in addition to Sundays and Austrian holidays, which were many. One thing I did in those days was write and review memory cards in one of those computer programs. But instead of writing the translation on those cards, I started using images. If I wanted to learn the meaning of the word dog in French, I would Google images of dogs and discover that French bloggers didn't choose what I expected.

Their dogs were smaller, prettier, and somehow more French. (Laughs) So I used those dogs to learn the meaning of dog and improved my vocabulary using these images from French bloggers. After developing vocabulary, I moved on to sentences. I started

learning

grammar and abstract words by filling in the blanks in a sentence. If I wanted to learn the past tense, I made up a story. For example, yesterday ------ to school with a photo of a school. That's how I learned the abstract rules. Three months later, I went to that interview and found myself in the same room with this French girl, who started the conversation by saying "Good morning," and the first thing that came to mind was "Good morning." Then she started talking to me in French and I realized that she understood what she was saying and, furthermore, knew how to respond.

She wasn't fluent, she stuttered a little, but it was the first time I spoke French in my life. She was speaking in French and thinking in French. The conversation lasted 15 minutes and at the end she told me: “You know, something is wrong with your placement test. The test says you are at the intermediate level, but we found that you are at the advanced level.” So in the next seven weeks I read ten books and wrote seventy pages of articles, and by the end of that summer I was fluent in French. I realized that she had found something important.

So I started writing about it, creating software tools around it, and correcting it. In 2012 I learned Russian. I took revenge on that language. From 2013 to 2015 I learned Hungarian. In 2015, I started

learning

Japanese, then I quit and learned Spanish. I went back to Japanese because it never ends. In each of these experiences I learned a lot. I learned ways to modify the system and increase efficiency here and there, but the basic concept was the same. If you want to learn a language efficiently, you have to bring it to life. Each word must be associated with sounds, images, smells, flavors and feelings.

Every little rule can't be abstract, but it should help you tell your story. If you follow this, you will find that the words will start to stick in your mind and the rules too. You will realize that you do not need a language gene, nor a gift from God, to achieve this. It's something we all have the time and ability to achieve. Thank you all. (applause)