Hello! I'm Leanne. Are you learning a
foreign language? Maybe English? And when you try to have a conversation in that
language you struggle? You struggle to understand what the other person is
saying and you struggle to find the words that you want to use. You translate
from your own language into the language you're trying to speak and you become
awkward, uncomfortable, embarrassed? Well you're not alone. And today's your
lucky day! Because I'm going to teach you the secret to speaking a
foreign
language comfortably, naturally so that you can understand what other people are
saying to you and you can say what you want to say. Now the normal way that we
learn a language is... quite often we learn at school, or we decide that we're going
to learn a language as an adult, and we go to a class, we learn from books, CDs.
We learn grammar, we learn how to compose a sentence. We learn nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, past tense, present tense, future tense, and at the end of
...maybe a couple of years we can produce a perfect sentence in that language. But if we try to have a conversation with a native speaker of that language we struggle. We can't
understand what they're saying they can't understand what we're saying.
It's embarrassing and we feel like we should just give up. I've certainly been there. Now the secret to overcoming this and to getting to a position where you
can comfortably have a conversation in your foreign language is listen. Listen
with y
our ear. Now you need to listen to specifically a
native speaker speaking that language that you are learning quite slowly
and you need to listen for at least 20 to 30 minutes a day or more. And take
your time with this because you'll be doing up for a while. I think for
me personally it took me four months of listening to my chosen language before I
could have a natural conversation and in my next video I will explain my whole
story of learning my language from start to finish.
But I have hea
rd that some people take eight months or more. So take your time
with it. Find things that interest you. Find YouTube videos they're fantastic,
podcasts, music, interviews, interviews of people you admire, things that you find
really interesting. Or, if for example you want to learn something about gardening
or any hobby that you have... search for that topic in your chosen language. So if
you're learning English and you want to know how to plant a tree... search... when you
when you search
for advice search in English "how to plant a tree". Do not
search in your own language because sometimes you won't even understand a
lot of what's there but it just increases your learning and if you're
going to be listening to your foreign language it may as well be something
that can benefit you at the same time. So, 20 to 30 minutes per day of listening to
the language spoken quite slowly so that you can understand the majority of it,
about 80%, and you spend time doing this every single day
.
When you're on the car when you're taking a bus or a train... all that
downtime that you have that maybe you'd normally listen to music or maybe you'd
normally listen to nothing. Listen to that language. it's actually not that
hard I found. Now what happens when we do this is that we are learning the
language with a different organ. We are learning our language with our ear. And
after a few months of this, or, it depends for each person, you will find that when
you want to say something
in that language it will be your ear that tells
you what to say and if you say something wrong it is your ear that tells you you
just said something wrong and it needs to change. It's like when we make a
mistake in our own native language it's our ear that says that doesn't
sound right. It's very liberating and it's lovely to
be able to have a relaxed conversation in that language without any barriers
and without feeling embarrassed. It's that simple. So in my next video I will
explain my own
story about how I learned a language with this method...well... no...not
how I learnt the language how I learned to converse in the language because
anyone can learn a language but being able to talk, have a relaxed conversation
in that language, that's another thing. Til next time!
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