Overrated vs Underrated Language Learning Methods

0:00 Hello and welcome back to Portuguese with Leo.

0:05 If it's your first time here, on this channel I teach Portuguese from Portugal

0:10 and talk about language learning in general.

0:14 Today we are going to take 14 methods/strategies for learning a new

0:19 language and decide or determine if they are overrated or underrated.

0:27 To help me, I have as a guest the greatest

0:31 expert in learning and teaching foreign languages ​​that I know,

0:36 Stefano Suigo, from the YouTube channel: linguaEpassione.

0:39 Stefano has already studied 14 languages,

0:42 knows how to speak 10 and has tried all the methods and more.

0:48 Welcome, Stefano.

0:50 Hi, Léo, thank you very much for inviting me back to your channel.

0:54 You already know that it is always a great

0:55 pleasure for me to be able to talk to you.

0:58 And for me it's a pleasure to have you here.

1:00 And let's start now with the first

1:03 language learning method or strategy, which is Duolingo.

1:09 One, two, three...

1:14 I choose both.

1:16 First, tell me why you think it's overrated.

1:19 I think it's a great method, in the beginning,

1:24 to start discovering a new language, to understand how a language works,

1:31 how basic sentences are constructed and so on, but in the long run,

1:39 I don't think it's a really efficient and effective

1:44 way to learn to use the language in everyday life.

1:48 I agree with all of this.

1:50 I chose both because I want to make one thing clear, which is:

1:54 you and I are people who love learning languages ​​and we

1:58 have a lot of friends who are also language nerds,

2:02 but most people learn a language not

2:05 because they enjoy learning languages ​​in general,

2:08 but because they need to learn that language,

2:10 or because they like that language in particular.

2:14 They don't like languages ​​in general, but those one specifically, yes.

2:17 I think that, for most people, it is overrated for the reasons you said.

2:23 Most people think that doing Duolingo means working on a language

2:28 or making progress in a language, and it's not...

2:32 Duolingo isn't bad, it's better to do something than to do nothing,

2:36 but the time we spend on Duolingo thinking we are learning a language,

2:40 we could actually be doing something else, more practical.

2:44 But I think it's underrated by the community

2:46 of people who love learning languages,

2:48 because for us it's easy to have the motivation to learn a language,

2:53 because it's something that gives us pleasure.

2:55 But for most people, Duolingo is a great way to gain that initial motivation.

3:00 But yeah, because in this video we want to say

3:03 whether we think it's underrated or overrated for most people,

3:08 I would say it's overrated for most people.

3:13 Good.

3:14 Very good.

3:15 We move on to the second, which is group lessons.

3:19 One, two, three and...

3:24 We agree.

3:25 We agree.

3:27 You go first.

3:30 Look, I don't want to say that group classes are useless, because it's not true.

3:37 They also have advantages, for example,

3:40 the fact of meeting other people who share

3:44 the same interests and even friendships can be born.

3:49 I, for example, here in Brussels, I live in Brussels, so in Belgium,

3:55 and today I can say that I have Belgian friends because

4:00 we took a Japanese course together many years ago and even today,

4:07 we are still good friends.

4:10 But what is the problem?

4:13 In my opinion, by definition, as we are in a class, in a group of people,

4:19 there will be differences when it comes to motivation,

4:24 the reasons why different people learn a language.

4:30 And naturally, also in the type of learner,

4:33 there is this word in English that doesn't exist in Italian,

4:37 nor in Portuguese, I think.

4:38 It's a type of apprentice, student.

4:41 Apprentice or student, which we are, we are all different.

4:46 Each of us has different demands when it comes to learning a language.

4:53 So I think these differences could be problematic in the long run as well.

5:02 Yeah, I agree with everything you said.

5:05 I would also add that the fact

5:07 that people have different origins can also affect it,

5:10 that is, if I am in a Japanese class with Koreans,

5:13 the level of the class will have to be lowered to teach

5:17 me Japanese through English and Koreans could be learning much faster,

5:22 bridging the gap between Japanese and Korean.

5:26 And private lessons?

5:28 Look, okay.

5:33 Of course yes, of course yes.

5:36 This is an almost direct consequence of what we just said about group classes.

5:43 Do you want to speak first?

5:44 I think most people agree that private

5:47 classes can be more helpful than group classes.

5:51 But I think they're underrated, because I think people think about classes

5:55 and put the two in almost the same category.

5:57 I'm going to have classes vs I'm not going to have classes.

5:59 And a private class is much better than a group class,

6:04 because in a group class, if you are one of 10 students,

6:08 in one hour you spent six minutes, let's say,

6:11 you got six minutes of the teacher's attention, right?

6:14 In a private class, you are 1 of 1 student,

6:17 so in an hour you have 60 minutes for the teacher to pushing you.

6:21 Exactly, you've already said it all.

6:23 The simple fact is that in a private lesson,

6:28 if the teacher is a good teacher and understands your demands,

6:35 by definition, you will get what you need at that moment in your learning.

6:45 Next, live in the country of the language.

6:49 Oh ok.

6:52 Also, yes.

6:54 Look, it helps, okay?

6:56 Living in the country where your target language is spoken certainly helps,

7:02 because you are surrounded by people who speak that language all the time,

7:13 but it is not indispensable, as people sometimes think.

7:20 In other words, it's not that it's not useful, if everything else is equal,

7:23 you being in the country of the language or not, it's much better to be there,

7:28 because you capture the nuances, you see the language around you.

7:32 If you are an attentive person,

7:34 who is aware of the way people speak, every interaction in the supermarket,

7:38 you think: Oh, this person constructed this sentence this way,

7:41 it must be the natural way.

7:43 But that's the problem, it's overrated.

7:45 This happened a lot with Italian, for example,

7:48 I learned Italian very well and lived in Italy for 10 months, 10 months.

7:54 And when I meet Italians: Oh, okay,

7:56 but you lived in Italy, if I lived in Portugal, too...

8:00 No, no, no.

8:02 It doesn't work like that.

8:03 It wasn't because I lived in Italy that I learned Italian,

8:06 it was because I lived in Italy,

8:07 made a big effort and then when I returned to Portugal,

8:11 I learned even more because I lived with Italians.

8:15 So I think that more than living in the country

8:19 of the language is creating the life of a native speaker.

8:24 This can happen either in the country of the language or in your country.

8:29 And in your country it can happen easily thanks to the internet nowadays.

8:33 Exactly.

8:33 In the digital age we live in today,

8:37 it is practically possible to bring the country into your home.

8:42 We have VPN, we have Netflix, we have the opportunity to have access to content

8:53 in our target language almost 24 hours a day.

8:58 Did you hear what Stefano said?

9:00 When we were talking about the various ways to live virtually in a country,

9:05 he talked about VPNs.

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10:53 This brings us to language exchanges.

10:56 3, 2, 1.

10:58 Very good.

11:01 Glad we agree.

11:03 Why do you think they are underrated?

11:08 Because I don't get the impression that many people are doing that.

11:14 I think it's very, very good because it gives you

11:18 access to the language actually spoken by people who aren't teachers.

11:26 Ok?

11:27 So it is possible to have this exchange of language,

11:32 but also of culture, of everyday language.

11:36 Have you used a language exchange in any of the languages ​​you learned?

11:41 Yes, I'm still using it to maintain my Icelandic.

11:46 I have an Icelandic friend and Icelandic is also a very rare language.

11:50 So, I'm very happy to have this opportunity.

11:55 And also this friendship that continues to grow.

11:59 It is an aspect, perhaps,

12:01 even more important than the linguistic progress itself.

12:06 Exactly.

12:07 And in the end, these videos are your exchange in Portuguese.

12:12 What?

12:13 The videos on my channel, these videos,

12:15 other videos, in the end, are your exchange.

12:17 This leads to another one that I have here,

12:20 which is: Relationships and friendships in language.

12:23 I don't think I need to say anything.

12:27 Obviously...

12:28 It's underrated.

12:29 I'm going to tell you a little about how rewarding it was,

12:35 for example, with Italian.

12:37 I think there are several levels here.

12:40 Just learning a language is very rewarding because

12:43 you can communicate with people and when you

12:45 reach a very high level and people communicate

12:48 with you as if you were one of them,

12:51 you overcome the language barrier and the cultural barrier,

12:54 because you learn the culture, it's one of the best things and it's

12:58 one of the most motivating things to continue.

13:00 From the moment you start to have friends who

13:03 speak that language and develop relationships in that language,

13:07 it becomes very motivating for you to keep improving,

13:10 to keep talking to those people,

13:13 to keep learning the culture, share memes, share funny videos, share things...

13:20 Exactly, you are describing my experience with Finnish.

13:25 Being accepted into a community that speaks such a different

13:33 language as one of them was really very satisfying.

13:39 And I've never lived in Finland, so this could even replace the country,

13:47 it could be like you live in the country

13:51 because you have important relationships with other people.

13:54 That.

13:55 Next we have flashcards/spaced repetition, in other words, studying vocabulary.

14:01 Three, two, one...

14:05 All right, now.

14:06 For the most part, I also think it's a little overrated,

14:12 but if we use decks created by ourselves and based on our lives,

14:21 based on our personal experience, on the expressions,

14:26 on the words that are around us,

14:30 it can be useful, especially in a phase of vocabulary expansion,

14:35 not as a rule or as the only method of learning the language,

14:41 no, that's not it, I don't think it works.

14:44 I think that normally, when a person thinks about learning vocabulary,

14:48 they think about studying the words,

14:50 memorizing the words, flashcards, I don't know what.

14:53 And to a certain extent,

14:54 in the beginning we have to study words, there's not much escape.

14:59 But it's boring and not as effective as just trying to understand the language,

15:05 which appears in content that excites us more.

15:09 Read, listen and try to understand.

15:12 Just understand.

15:13 Even if I, after two months, hear a language,

15:15 I still don't know how to use it, just understand, just understand.

15:18 And then, little by little, develop active vocabulary.

15:22 What do you think about talking from day one, trying to talk from day one?

15:33 It's hard.

15:36 Overrated?

15:37 Yes yes.

15:40 It's hard, because I know that trying to speak a language, let's say,

15:47 too much before having been exposed enough to that language,

15:54 doesn't make much sense, ok?

15:58 But since I personally like languages, usually because of the way they sound,

16:08 for me, it's part of the pleasure of learning to reproduce those sounds.

16:18 Therefore, I do.

16:20 I've been talking since the first day,

16:23 but I know that it's not based on this thing

16:27 that I'm going to make very fast progress.

16:30 I think it depends on the languages.

16:34 For example, if I now set out to learn

16:37 a language very similar to the ones I already speak.

16:40 For example, when I learned Italian,

16:42 I already spoke Spanish, Portuguese, and had some French.

16:45 It was easy to start speaking from the first day because I already

16:49 had a very high understanding just by speaking languages ​​from the same family.

16:53 Learning phonetics, do you think it is under or overrated?

16:57 Yep...

16:58 That's it, underrated.

17:02 Under, yes.

17:04 Look, this might even be interesting.

17:07 At first, when I was young,

17:09 I didn't think it was so important to learn phonetics.

17:15 I learned grammar, conversation, and then,

17:20 over time, I learned to improve my pronunciation.

17:25 But I wasn't so interested in how

17:30 this language is actually produced and pronounced correctly.

17:35 Now I know it's very important.

17:39 If, from the beginning, we learn the phonetics of a language,

17:46 we will have an easier time learning later.

17:52 And we don't develop errors that are

17:54 later more difficult to correct, in my opinion.

17:57 What is underrated is also learning good pronunciation itself.

18:01 I think that when most people think about learning a language,

18:03 they think about grammar and vocabulary, right?

18:07 I understand where this comes from, it also

18:10 comes perhaps from the scholastic method of learning languages,

18:12 we are used to thinking like that.

18:14 Undoubtedly.

18:15 But the truth is that if we think about what languages ​​are,

18:18 what identifies a language is pronunciation, not grammar.

18:22 The sound.

18:23 Sound, that's what makes a language, that's what makes Italian, for example,

18:27 one of the languages ​​considered one of the most beautiful in the world.

18:32 It is grammatically very similar to other Romance languages,

18:35 but phonetically it has its own sound.

18:40 The character of a language is the way it sounds.

18:46 Exactly.

18:46 A native speaker can sometimes make mistakes in words,

18:50 sometimes they can make mistakes in grammar,

18:52 but they don't make mistakes in phonetics,

18:55 because phonetics is your fingerprint of how you speak that language, isn't it?

19:00 Very well said.

19:02 Study grammar.

19:05 It's inevitable to talk about it, right?

19:07 Exactly.

19:11 So, overrated.

19:15 But why?

19:17 Because of the school, because of the scholastic systems.

19:21 Because we grow up as children,

19:25 thinking that learning a language means learning the grammar of that language.

19:30 But we now, today, know very well that this is not the case.

19:35 Grammar can be an instrument to support your way of expressing your ideas,

19:44 but grammar alone won't do it.

19:49 I think that's it, grammar is overrated because we are so used to studying

19:53 grammar in foreign language courses and being

19:56 assessed on our knowledge of grammar.

19:59 Exactly, exactly.

20:00 Which is what makes us think that grammar is everything.

20:03 Personally, I think it should monitor our progress.

20:06 When we come across a grammatical construction that we don't understand,

20:10 we study it to understand how it works.

20:13 So we continue to be exposed to language and we

20:15 come across something new or we realize that we

20:17 want to express something that we don't know

20:19 the structure of, so we study grammar and grammar follows.

20:24 That's right.

20:24 For me, grammar is a tool to express my ideas.

20:33 And we need to try to study it in this way more,

20:38 and much less as an isolated theory, because in isolation, it is almost useless.

20:45 This brings me to the comprehensible input.

20:48 What is comprehensible input?

20:50 To begin with, is it over or underrated?

20:52 I almost made a mistake.

20:54 It is underrated.

20:58 What is comprehensible input, Stefano?

21:01 Comprehensible input means being exposed to content, stories, whatever,

21:08 so that we can understand most of what we see or hear.

21:18 It has to be content that is a little more challenging,

21:26 I mean, we are in a position to understand maybe 70,

21:33 80% of what we hear and we have to make an effort to understand the rest.

21:41 I think it's almost, honestly,

21:44 it's almost enough to learn a similar language, I think we already know.

21:50 But it's not enough for everything.

21:53 If I now want to learn Japanese or Finnish,

21:57 I can't expose myself to very basic Japanese, I won't understand anything.

22:01 No, no, exactly.

22:03 So how would you use comprehensible input

22:07 for different languages ​​or when would you use it?

22:10 It's when, it's more a question of when.

22:13 I think that from level A2, B1,

22:17 we are almost at the intermediate level for really different languages,

22:24 where the context itself doesn't help that much.

22:28 Write in the language.

22:31 Write in the language.

22:34 Let's see, let's see.

22:37 I think it's underrated because very few people do it, period.

22:42 And so far we have been talking here about consuming the language,

22:46 consuming, consuming, consuming, consuming, speaking,

22:47 because you have to speak it in your daily life, but really,

22:50 unless you work in a language, nothing forces you to write in that language.

22:57 And I once saw this phrase, I don't know where else, that writing is thinking.

23:03 Writing forces you to think.

23:05 And so writing in a foreign language forces us to think

23:08 in that language and I think that's one of the best things.

23:12 It's difficult to write, it's a difficult thing.

23:15 It is difficult.

23:16 Even in our language, much less in another language,

23:18 but I think it's one of the best things we can do from the intermediate level.

23:22 It might even be useful for beginner levels too,

23:27 in the sense that when you communicate in writing with other people,

23:36 you're communicating in that language, you're writing,

23:39 you're thinking, you have to write a message,

23:42 even if it's a way of writing is very different

23:46 in the type of language we use compared to writing a diary.

23:53 Still, I think it's a way of communicating

23:58 that forces you to think a little more.

24:00 I've had my diary for years now and I write in Portuguese,

24:07 English, Spanish and Italian.

24:08 I have already ventured into writing in French and it really helps me a lot.

24:14 Of course I don't have someone else to correct me,

24:17 although sometimes I can share excerpts with other people,

24:21 with friends, speakers of these languages ​​and ask them to correct me.

24:24 Look, a tip for those who want to write more and get corrections,

24:31 there are community sites on the internet that do

24:38 exactly that completely free of charge in several languages.

24:43 Now, I don't remember the names of these places, but if you search...

24:47 Then you will say...

24:49 If you search...

24:50 When this video comes out, it will be in the description.

24:54 Finally, talking, talking to yourself and shadowing, that sort of thing.

25:00 Oh ok.

25:02 As a method.

25:03 Okay, for you, they are different things, right?

25:05 They are different things, yes.

25:07 So, I'm going to do that.

25:09 So wait, talk to yourself.

25:11 Ah, talking to yourself...

25:13 Sub, ok.

25:15 Do you think shadowing is overrated?

25:19 Personally, yes.

25:22 I would tend to say that shadowing is underrated.

25:27 Finally, therefore, we do not agree on one thing!

25:32 Why is talking to yourself, in general, underrated?

25:36 So, first of all, it's completely free.

25:39 Exactly.

25:40 And for me it's almost the way I use it,

25:47 the form of linguistic practice that I use most,

25:50 I speak, I speak to myself, I speak out loud, out loud at home.

25:56 I find it really useful for practicing speaking,

26:01 of course, but also for realizing what I'm still missing,

26:06 the words I want to use, but which are currently missing.

26:11 I can research how to say that thing or I

26:17 can research the most appropriate grammatical form to express that idea.

26:23 The idea you meant when you were talking to yourself.

26:26 Exactly.

26:27 The fact that I was trying to say this thing

26:32 is the demonstration that I need that, I need this...

26:36 It's something important to you.

26:37 And I would add another benefit of speaking to yourself when we are at home,

26:42 especially a language that you already have at least an intermediate level,

26:45 is that when you start doing it several times,

26:48 you start to get into "thinking in this language" mode.

26:52 When I start my days speaking a language,

26:54 when I surround myself a lot with a language, I speak,

26:57 write, listen, catch myself, I wake up in the morning thinking about

27:00 that language and it's a kind of snowball.

27:03 Thoughts begin to be born directly in that language,

27:08 instead of being translated.

27:10 Exactly.

27:12 However, you say shadowing, no.

27:16 Shadowing is speaking in a foreign language,

27:19 but repeating something, that is, we listen to a video,

27:23 an excerpt of audio or video, we pause it and try to repeat what was said.

27:28 We are not really speaking naturally what we would like to say,

27:32 but we are repeating what is said by a native speaker,

27:36 which allows us to try to speak as well as possible in terms of phonetics,

27:43 pronunciation, and correct grammar,

27:44 because we are the speeches of someone who is a native speaker.

27:49 I confess that I haven't done much lately, but when I did,

27:56 I didn't feel like they were my ideas, that they were things I wanted to say.

28:03 And so, maybe because it was other people's

28:07 thoughts or things that other people were saying,

28:11 and not so much mine, maybe it didn't work for me, personally.

28:17 But I will now challenge you.

28:19 OK.

28:20 You know how to quote many lines from Gato Fedorento.

28:24 You're right.

28:25 This is a form of shadowing.

28:27 Maybe it helped you with Portuguese,

28:29 I suppose it helped you with Portuguese without you realizing it.

28:32 And I notice this with my English, for example,

28:35 I grew up watching American series and films and I

28:38 really liked speaking the lines from some of the films,

28:41 and I think this helped me develop articulation without me realizing it.

28:45 Therefore, if we see shadowing as repeating things we like

28:51 and not necessarily an exercise like what you are saying,

28:54 of repeating someone's ideas, could it be more useful?

28:59 Yes, in this case yes, because you are doing something you enjoy and everything

29:06 that involves experiencing the language in a pleasant way is positive,

29:13 it is positive by definition.

29:15 Did I make you reconsider?

29:16 You made me think and reconsider this thing.

29:21 Very well, very well.

29:24 Look, I think that's all.

29:26 Thank you very much.

29:28 Thank you.

29:29 And until next time.

29:30 Until next time, bye.

29:31 Bye, bye.