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Learning How to Learn (Week 1)

Optional Interview with Benny Lewis

Dr. Barbara Oakley: When Benny Lewis turned 21, the only language he spoke was English.
Actually, he'd done quite poorly with languages in school. Truth be told, he initially had
problems even with English, and had to go to speech therapy when he was young because of it.
So Benny's not naturally gifted with languages. He has a degree in electronic engineering. So,
where I went from language to engineering, Benny went the other way around. Benny's love
affair with other cultures and speaking foreign languages began in 2003 after graduation from
the university, when he moved to Spain. He discovered that learning languages wasn't so hard
when you apply the right method. In his current career as a full time Language Hacker, over the
last dozen years, he has discovered people from all around the world who have learned to stop
making excuses about why they can't learn a language. And have instead learned, how to learn
a new language. I've read Benny's book, which is the best book on language learning I've ever
read. His advice is absolutely brilliant. If you think you don't have the language gene, or you're
too old and don't have time or are just too shy to try, Benny's book will help you get past these
hurdles. So it's a pleasure to welcome here, Benny Lewis.

Dr. Barbara Oakley: Benny, your life is always filled with so many adventures. So, tell me what
is your latest adventure?

Benny Lewis: My latest adventure is that this year I am trying to make America multilingual
and other countries multilingual that generally only speak English. And I am currently about
one, or 2,000 miles into my 7,000 mile, road trip across America. I did the whole West coast to
Northeast and I'm going to every single state, and I'm trying to encourage people to learn
languages.

Dr. Barbara Oakley: Wow! What an endeavor, and what an important endeavor. You know,
you talk about people sometimes wanting to learn languages for the wrong reasons. What are
those wrong reasons, and what have you discovered is a more motivating factor for learning
languages?

Benny Lewis: Right, well, there are quite a lot of wrong reasons. The worst of all is to show off.
If you think that I will learn this language so people will think I'm smart, or people will like me
more or I'll be able to pick up girls or anything along those lines, then it's, it's not going to work
because I found that what you really do need, is a passion for that language. For the culture,
you want to really speak that language inherently for the reasons, of how fascinating that
language is. And that's going to motivate you to, to speak it. If you have other things like you
just want, you just want to get an A in an exam, or a B just so you can get into university, then
that's not a very good motivator, because you are not actually interested in using that
language. So, I highly recommend people try to embrace the culture, try to spend time
speaking with other human beings, and then you'll get the, the motivation that's going to help
you to skyrocket your progress.
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Dr. Barbara Oakley: I like that approach. You've talked about how children have one big
advantage, can you tell us what that advantage is?

Benny Lewis: Sure. So, I think that the fact that children are not so much perfectionist like
adults tend to be, children are okay with making mistakes. They kind of stumble and fall and
we, we help them along and they play games in the language and they live the language
whereas, in language learning adults tend to study dusty old grammar books, and can be so
afraid of making mistakes that they won't speak at all. And this is a huge mistake because, in
language learning it's not like we visualize this in an academic setting, where every mistake you
make gives you a red X and if you make enough you get an F. That's not the real world. In the
real world you can make lots of mistakes but people will still understand you. If I have just
started to learn a language, you may think I should wait until I say, excuse me kind sir, could
you direct me to the nearest bathroom please? Or, I could just say bathroom, where? And
people understand that, that's not a perfectly formed sentence, but you have to be a good
beginner learner. And a good beginner learner knows to make a few mistakes, or a lot of
mistakes, to get their point across. And I find children, that's the, their main advantage is that
they're, they're okay with just saying something. And they're not going to over analyze
everything that comes out of their mouth. The good news is, this is not an inherent advantage
that is built into them, and not built into us. It's just kind of the way children act, and we can
learn from that. We can learn to, try to have some fun with our language. Laugh at the fact
that we're making mistakes, and realize people are a lot nicer that you think and they're going
to be very patient with you.

Dr. Barbara Oakley: I, I think that's an important point, is well of course, just being willing to
make mistakes, making those mistakes, and then realizing that most people are actually pretty
friendly and accommodating as you're learning and adjusting and getting situated. One, one
thing that you've talked about that I, I think is a really important point is the idea of self-
fulfilling prophet, prophecies. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Benny Lewis: Well for myself for instance, I got into language learning as an adult. But, I failed
at five years learning German in school. I barely passed my exams after ten or eleven years
learning Irish or Gaelic. And I lived in Spain for six months and I did not pick up, pick up any
Spanish. And I really, genuinely feel that the reason this happened was because of a series of
self-fulfilling prophecies. When I was in Spain and 21 years old, I told myself, you know,
I'm too old to learn a language now. I passed this cut-off age 14, and the thing is, it's a self-
fulfilling prophecy because I believed this was true. So I thought, okay, well there's no point in
doing any work now, so I only put like minimal effort in and because of that I don't make any
progress. And then I look at that lack of progress and I'm like, you see, this just goes to prove
that adults are not good language learners and it makes no sense, when you actually look at it
that way, and it was the same in school. In school I initially didn't do so well on my exams, and I
was thinking, oh I can't do so well on these exams so I guess there's no point in really studying.
And then of course I did worse in my exams, and it was just a constant feedback loop. And like
there's a quote from Henry Ford that I like relevant to this, he says, “Whether you think you can
or think you can't, you're right.” And I think that's the case with self-fulfilling prophecies.
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People need to put these excuses aside, that I don't have any time; you have, you make the
time. I'm too old; you're not too old. There are so many ways you can realize that none of
these are real issues; that the actual reason you haven't learned the language, is your devotion
to these reasons.

Dr. Barbara Oakley: You say that successful language learners learn, despite the challenges.
What did you mean by that?

Benny Lewis: So people have this idealized vision. You know, the grass is always greener on
the other side. They see someone who successfully learned the language, and they think to
themselves, this person has had it easy. They must have had rich parents who, who paid for
tuition their whole life. They must have just been blessed to have had the right DNA to give
them the language learning gene. They must have had it so easy, and just stumbled across
native speakers and, had a perfect situation. This is simply not the case. This is what we like to
tell ourselves once again, in our self-fulfilling prophecies. I don't have the ideal situation, I don't
have good luck in all of this and the other person does. And in talking to a lot of language
learners, I have found each one of them have their own challenges to to go through. There are
some really, well known language learners on YouTube who are, very impressive in their
language skills but they, they're family people, they have a family to raise, they may be working
one or two jobs. You know, it's not like they laze around with millions of dollars and just spend
all day long learning languages, they have their own challenges. And I even came across a very
inspirational story of a lady who's partially deaf and clinically blind at the same time, and she
still managed to learn five languages. So this shows me, that no mater what the set backs
people have, they find a way around them. And you know, and you can say oh, that guy has it
easy, because he can travel, and I can't, but then find a way to learn a language despite not
traveling. There are actually great ways to get immersion virtually. You can get Skype based
conversation practice. You can listen to streamed radio 24 hours a day if you wanted to. You
could create a virtual immersion environment. But any one of these things are, issues that
other people may have. You may have advantages that other successful language learners may
not have had. You may be able to afford a private teacher, you may be, you may have spare
time on your weekends, when someone has worked two jobs, or has a family to support, and
has less time flexibility. So, every single person in the world has had challenges to go through.
And it's just unrealistic to think, woe is me, I have this unfortunate situation no one else can
understand. I guarantee you no matter what your problem is, a successful language learner has
had that if not more problems and still manage to overcome.

Dr. Barbara Oakley: People sometimes have a history of failure when they've tried to learn
new languages. Um, what do you say to someone who’s failed when they're learning a new
language, and have you ever felt like giving up in your language studies?

Benny Lewis: I felt like giving up millions of times. And even in my more experienced stages of
learning a language. And the thing is, it's like I said before nobody has it, has it super duper
easy, including successful and experienced language learners. So at the very start, for instance,
when I tried to learn Spanish, I tested out a lot of things that, that were huge failures. I spent
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six months trying to learn Spanish, and I got nowhere in that time. One of the things I did was I,
I bought El señor de los Anillos, which is The Lord of the Rings. And I thought if I just went
through this book page by page, with the dictionary, then after I reach page 700 I'd be fluent in
Spanish. I had this like, ridiculous idea and it took me a whole week to get to page two. So,
when I was on page two, I was thinking to myself, it's going to take me a decade to read this
book at this rate. And I was thinking, I'm just, I'm just an idiot, I'm not destined to learn Spanish
or any other language. And even, like more recently a couple of years ago I was learning
Mandarin. And I didn't find the Mandarin language itself to be so complicated. It's actually a
lot, straight forward than you may think. But I was, learning it in the country, which I actually
do not recommend to people, I recommend you learn the language in advance via the internet.
So, that when you're in the country you can experience the culture. I think it's kind of a bit of a
waste to, be in the country to be in study mode when you should be out enjoying it. But, I at
the time I was not, doing that and I found it very difficult to adjust to the cultural side of things.
And that slowed me down dramatically on the language side of things. So, no matter how
experienced some one is, they're going to run into problems, they're going to get slowed down
and it's, it's like anything. If you've, if at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again. And like a lot
of people in language learning would reach a plateau, as well, they may make a bit of progress
and get stuck. And then they think I'm broken. I'm not a good language learner. And I found
that, that it's the exact opposite. People need to try different techniques. So my suggestion is
people get into speaking the language immediately. I give tips for people to speak from the
very first day, um, and then that may work for you, it may not work for you. But you try
something out, and if you still say after trying this out for a few weeks, I'm still not making any
progress at all. Then that doesn't mean you're not a good language learner, it means you're
using a system that is not good for you. If you're studying a lot, and you're not making
progress, you may need to abandon a study-based, um, approach, and try to interact with the
language a lot more. So that's, that's what I'd suggest.

Dr. Barbara Oakley: I love these ideas and these approaches. I know they were very helpful for
me with Russian. In, in this course, one of the things we talk about is the importance of pushing
your attention very hard, for example, when you're using something like the Pomodoro
Technique, and then relaxing. You talk about something like that, with your mini-mission brain
melting technique, could you tell us a little about that?

Benny Lewis: Right. Yeah, I, I'm actually a big fan of the Pomodoro Technique as well. I've
used that a lot during my intensive study days. Um, so I definitely agree with that, I've tried to
study all day, it just doesn't work, you need little breaks. But they then, that also applies over
the longer term. So when I was learning some languages intensely over a couple of months,
then that's all my focus. I'm like, I've given up TV, I've given up like, you know, going to the
cinema, going out and so on and I find, I reach a certain point, where my brain just feels
saturated, and I can't really take it anymore, and it's unfortunate, and I try to study, but it just
goes in one ear, and out the other. So, I applied this to the kind of medium term scale. And
what I would do is, I would start, like if I'm in an intensive learning period, so this is not people
who are studying an hour a week, but people who are studying like three or four or more hours
a day, so you're putting every spare second you have into it. Then I would be working hard for
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five or six days a week, and then I would take one day off. And I just repeat that process,
because if you do it consistently for too long, you, um, you may over exert yourself. I'm, I kind
of, I find that I kind of apply this Pomodoro Technique in over, over several days. And then,
even bigger than that, I would repeat this process for four weeks, and then on at the end once a
month, I would take the whole weekend off. So, so it's weird, you would think you know, oh, I
just have to study intensively. And once again, this is not something necessarily true for
everybody, but I found that I, my limit is about six days of consistent study, and I need a little
break, and then three or four weeks of consistent study, and I need a proper longer break.

Dr. Barbara Oakley: Well, boring into some of the specific details of how you learn, you
mention that, that rote rehearsal, just repeating a word over and over again, for example, is not
a good way to remember. What is a better way?

Benny Lewis: It's not a good way to remember, but it kind of, it kind of works a little bit, I mean
repetition is part of learning any language. But the catch is I see rote repetition as very
asymmetrical. So, for instance, when I was learning German, and I saw that the word for
[tapping the table NOISE] table is tisch. So I just said to myself, tisch, table, tisch, table, tisch,
table, tisch, table, whatever it was, 100 times, or 1,000 times. And it kind of works such that
when I was reading German and I saw the word tisch, I was like table, because I kind of had that
repetitive association. And if I heard it spoken, I would remember it, but there's a huge
downside is it doesn't work symmetrically. It doesn't work the other way, if you want to say the
word table in German, you don't have anything that latches you to that, you just have the tisch
kind of association. So, in that case, I highly recommend people consider using mnemonics,
because this kind of glues the word to your, um, to your memory. So for instance, in that
example with the German tisch, I would think to myself, okay let's imagine, a table made out of
tissues. So I have you know, a table made out of kitchen roll or whatever it is, and I put a drink
on it, and the table collapses, the drink spills everywhere, I have to get all of this, all of these
tissues and I have to wipe it up because it's created a huge mess. So what that does, is it puts
this association in my mind of visualizing a table made out of tissues, so that when I'm speaking
German, and I want to say table, I can just think for a second, the table was made out of tissues,
and I have that association. So, you have a link that connects the words you want, to, to the
words you want to say, to the translation. Now, the thing is, you don't need to do this forever,
because you only need the association a couple of times. And then the word just becomes a
natural part of you. So, there's a great website, memorise.com, M E M (O) R I S E, and this has
people voting up their favorite mnemonics, um, that's a great system. Another one is, other
than mnemonics, I'm a big fan of spaced repetition, so there's an app you can install on your
smart phone, called Anki. And this presents the words to you in a way, that you see them just
before you would forget them. And that's another problem with, like memorizing a big list is
you may see a word that's important to you, but you may not see it again for a very long time.
And you may see the simple words over and over again. So when you use a particular system it
shows you the harder words way more frequently, and the easier words way less frequently.

Dr. Barbara Oakley: I, I like your ideas of, not only mnemonics, but creative mnemonics for
example with tonal languages. You use the idea of something falling or something rising in your
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memory tricks, and I'd never thought of doing something like that before, so I think these kinds
of ideas are enormously helpful. And actually in your book, I have read your book, I love your
book, there are dozens and dozens more helpful ideas, and I could ask you dozens and dozens
more questions, but I want people to actually read your book, so I guess I'll leave off here. And
with that, I'd just like to thank you so much for your wonderful and very insightful answers.

Benny Lewis: Thank you very much, really appreciate you having me on to talk to everybody,
giving them some inspiration.

[Benny Lewis’ book is titled: Fluent in 3 Months. How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak
Any Language From Anywhere in the World]