{"id":9361,"date":"2013-11-22T11:58:38","date_gmt":"2013-11-22T11:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=9361"},"modified":"2013-11-22T11:58:38","modified_gmt":"2013-11-22T11:58:38","slug":"how-to-learn-any-language-in-six-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=9361","title":{"rendered":"How to learn any language in six months"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I came across this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0\">TED talk<\/a> yesterday in which Chris Lonsdale, a psychologist from New Zealand who runs a company in Hong Kong, talks about language learning. He believes that anybody can learn a language in six months if they follow the five principles and seven actions that he has formulated after assessing all the research available on language learning. <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/d0yGdNEWdn0?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The bit about principles and actions starts 8 minutes into the video.<\/p>\n<p>There are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrislonsdale.com\/index.php?_room=7&#038;_action=list&#038;title=&#038;category=Language+Learning&#038;date=&#038;keyword=&#038;searchDone=1\">articles<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrislonsdale.com\/index.php?_room=8&#038;_action=list&#038;title=&#038;category=Language+Learning+Process&#038;date=&#038;keyword=&#038;searchDone=1\">materials<\/a> about language learning available on his website.<\/p>\n<p>The five principles are:<\/p>\n<p>1. Focus on language content that is relevant to you.<br \/>\n2. Use your language as a tool to communicate from day 1.<br \/>\n3. When you understand the message you will acquire the language unconsciously, i.e comprehensible input (Krashen, et al)<br \/>\n4. Language is not about accumulating a lot of knowledge but is rather a type of physiological training.<br \/>\n5. Psycho-physiological state matters &#8211; you need to be happy, relaxed, and most importantly, you need to be tolerant of ambiguity. Don&#8217;t try to understand every detail as it will drive you crazy.<\/p>\n<p>The seven actions are:<\/p>\n<p>1. Listen a lot &#8211; it doesn&#8217;t matter if you understand or not. Listen to rhythms and patterns.<br \/>\n2. Focus on getting the meaning first, before the words. Body language and facial expressions can help.<br \/>\n3. Start mixing, get creative, and use what you&#8217;re learning<br \/>\n4. Focus on the core &#8211; the most commonly-used words, and use the language to learn more (What is this\/that? How do you say ? etc.)<br \/>\n5. Get a language parent &#8211; someone who is fluent in the language and who will do their best to understand what you mean; who will not correct your mistakes; who will feedback their understanding of what you&#8217;re saying using correct language, and uses words that you know.<br \/>\n6. Copy the face &#8211; watch native speakers and observe who their face, and particular their mouth, moves when they&#8217;re speaking<br \/>\n7. &#8220;Direct connect&#8221; to the target language &#8211; find ways to connect words directly with images and other internal representations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I came across this TED talk yesterday in which Chris Lonsdale, a psychologist from New Zealand who runs a company in Hong Kong, talks about language learning. He believes that anybody can learn a language in six months if they follow the five principles and seven actions that he has formulated after assessing all the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-language-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}