TIMESTAMPS: 01:35 - Language learning advice vs. language-specific information 03:06 - Language learning is a skill (which most natives don't have) 06:19 - Why there’s so much bad advice 08:10 - Even professional teachers often don’t understand language acquisition 12:12 - Rebuttal: “But top sports coaches often were never top athletes” 13:44 - Most natives are bad at articulating how their language works 15:29 - Natives will often give you false information 19:46 - How to properly utilize feedback from natives 22:16 - Conclusion Sorry if the audio seems out of sync at times…… While editing, it’s hard to know when the audio’s out of sync and when my computer’s simply lagging.
WanderingDoc I write an outline, then speak off the top of my head while filming. I usually film many takes for each section, and then edit them together in post.
Matt, I'd Like to learn Japanese and as far as I know your channel It seems to be one of the or the single one who really could help me learning it effectively cause you know a lot about it, learn Japanese. I remember of got watched a video of yours with Steve Kaufmann and you said that you're almost 6 years on your journey. What I'm trying to ask you is... Is there a video on your channel where you explain how you began to learn it? A detailed video? I Like pretty much of watch your videos and it'd be wonderful for me if you answer me!! I know that you're probably busy but, I also would like to share you that I learned English with you... I'm gonna explain you that if you're with free time... Thank you so much for your patient to read it. It's important for me.
exactly since they don't remember how they actually learned they might as well have been born fluent that's the way i feel about my english ability tbh
@@babygorl9541 some people have different beliefs but I think that people aren't born fluently, because first, I'm not American but I speak English very fluently ;v;
Couldn't agree more. As a native Japanese speaker I can articulate every fine difference in use as to when to use は and が as minutely and precisely as an average native English speaker can explain the adjective order in English or which of a(n)/the/ø one should use in a particular sentence. The answer is always "Yes" or "It just works."
ah, really. I really hate Japanese people being such a arrogant like that, as a native Japanese speaker You know I can tell when to use wa/ga of course but could NEVER tell their difference by 100% clear/logical explanation and reaching to the level that the non-native speakers are actually able to understand its logic perfectly... until Ive been told by one of my foreign friends who can speak 90% accurate Japanese("almost native" level), the best way to explain it for non-native speaker which I had never heard before but I literary surprised so much that how logical and sophisticated the explanation was and nodded a lot.
@PepperDayJack pac 買い物が好き I like shopping. 買い物は好き Basically I like staying at home. But I like shopping. チョコレートが好き。 I like chocolate. チョコレートは好き。 I don't like sweets except chocolate.
your friends are excellent people. they are aware of what they know and dont know. so many people dont know the difference. they therefore contsantly lie and mislead. to themselves, even, which is a vicious circle leading to them getting even dumber.
Damn. This makes so much sense to me. It's abundantly clear to me why I'm not really qualified to "teach" English acquisition. I've been using various apps like HelloTalk or Busuu and correcting a learner's English. But virtually 80%+ of the time, I find myself looking up English grammar rules because I have no idea why some things sound strange or weird. (Now Google shows me English language learning ads 😂) And I end up second-guessing myself on what is the proper grammar of the sentence. I'm pretty sure I gave out some B.S. answers more than once. Thanks for pointing this out!
Man I can relate to looking up english grammar after correcting somebody's english. Matt did a great job articulating what ive been feeling recently about native speakers helping learners.
This first point is so true. As an iTalki teacher, I had one student who booked about 80% of my lessons. She was Chinese and her English was good (better than my best foreign language at the time) and she sometimes asked me stuff and I had to say "Your English is better than my Swedish, so you actually know more about this than I do." - and then there was the fact that Swedish is very near to English, versus English for her (being a long way from Chinese obviously). Another thing to watch out for is what I call "hyper correction" which is when the native speaker feels that if one is being strict about their language, then it should be pronounced or should be written in a certain way that is in fact wrong. One example is in Swedish, when R and S occur together (which they do all the time), then 90% of Swedes will pronounce it "shh" and this is considered correct, and is written in text books, but I came across a teacher who tried to insist that I should say "rrr" and "sss" as separate sounds, which sounds freakin' crazy unless you are Finno-Swedish. An equivalent in English would be those people who think that "who" doesn't exist and it must always be "whom", when they actually have no idea how to use "whom" correctly.
I fell into this trap (which you call "hyper correction") myself before. I was trying to help a friend who is learning my native language and she repeatedly asked me which among a couple of choices sounded best. This is pretty trivial to answer as a native speaker and most of the times it was, but sometimes when there were multiple options that sounded fine to me, I would for some reason start to doubt my intuition and instead "think in terms of rules" (which, obviously, never works). If you're the native in such a situation, I think it's a good rule to set for yourself to only rely on your intuition and nothing else. Consciousness and language don't go well together.
My native language is italian. A friend asked me when to use “l’imperfetto” and when to use “il passato prossimo” (both are past tenses) I was like... uuuhhhmmm i don’t know... But then she showed me her worksheets and i could of course solve it without problems... and she got angry because i told her idk but could use it the right way... 😬
This is exactly like my boyfriend, he is Russian and moved to England when he was young and I am learning Russian. I know how your friend feels it's frustrating. >_
Le regole ci sono, semplicemente sono legate al contesto e non ad una regola logica. Se ti mettessi a riflettere sulla "regola" probabilmente ci arriveresti (non saresti precisa magari). Come Matt insegna, in lingua madre la grammatica suona come un "aaaah, ora capisco" e non un "ah, quindi usando l'imperfetto mi posso riferire ad azioni che ero solito fare con frequenza".
I feel that. My girlfriend is Filipina and they have at least 3 different ways to say "you" (ikaw, ka, and mo) and when i ask her when to use which one, shes like "idk it just sounds right" (facepalm)
Tbh, I also don’t remember how I learned the second language. Other than consuming content for 1000s of hours, it’s hard to evaluate what of what I did made how much of a difference, and it was a long time ago. That is to say that even if someone was successful at learning a language, they probably also won’t be correct about a lot of stuff. For example I can tell if something sounds wrong in english (my second language), but often I can’t explain exactly why.
Yeah, exactly. I have the same problem. English is my second language and there are a lot of things I can't explain because I never truly "learned" those things. Something might sound right or wrong but I can't tell why.
Was literally just thinking of this, I don't really remember how I learned english, It had to be from the countless hours of exposure to the language on the internet and other types of media. I'm currently learning a new language and I'm struggling, knowing english and my native language helps with the vocabulary but besides that, it feels like learning a new language for the first time
Same, English is my second language, but I suck at explaining things like tenses because I actually never used any of that while learning it. I kinda just learned it by listening to it.
In the process of us learning a 2nd language lets say “english”, Most of us probably aren’t being serious on learning it. We might be learning like the words and stuff. But for the grammar we indirectly learn it from other people speaking english. So when we heard someone speak wrong english we can feel that the word is grammarly wrong but we don’t know how to explain it to anyone about their incorrect grammar because we barely studied anything about grammar in english (at least thats the case with me) Hope that answers the question :) Sorry for bad english ^_^
Same, I learned english through exposure, and I can speak it fluently, but in class, everyone expects me to get the best grades in English, but I can't score the best grade (a 10 in my country) because I don't know what are past tenses and shit like that, it's frustrating.
I've always said the same thing. Natives are good for pointing out what sounds right or wrong to them and what a native typically says or what they call something, but not language specific learning techniques. Ask a native Spanish-speaker how to form the imperfect subjunctive and they most likely won't even know what that is, although they use it naturally. I learned about how English worked (my native language) after studying other languages. Language learning (self study) is all about creating a continuous language learning environment and becoming obsessed with the language. You have to want to become part of the culture and community of those who speak the language. People don't realize all of the hours and experiences that native speakers have in their language. They have private tutors for years (mom, dad and siblings constantly talking around them and to them) and are sent to school for seven hours a day for 12 years (at least in the U.S.) where they hear and use the language in every class. They have to read, write, listen, speak and take tests constantly. Even in classes like P.E. and Math, they're learning and using the language. Adults don't invest that time in a foreign language. They also rarely completely stop speaking their native language. Adults also already have way more general knowledge than children so we obviously can learn some things much more quickly. The proof is always in the pudding. Listen to language learners who have reached high levels of fluency in the language. Each person's path is unique, but there are certain things we all had to do in order to learn, develop and master a foreign language.
I'm trying to imagine a traditional language teacher watching this video and going crazy about your ideas, which doesn't make any sense to their previous experience. I don't know why they think that shit they teach at school is supposed to work. That doesn't make sense!
They think just by learning grammar, you will master a language. The thing is you want to acquire the language naturally, not to analyse the language while you're speaking. I hate grammar- Grammar doesn't let me speak naturally.
There are definitely occasions where I'll ask my Japanese teacher (who is, in my opinion, extremely fluent in English, even accent and pronunciation wise) why something is the way it is in Japanese, and if he genuinely doesn't know the answer he'll say that he doesn't know why, which I appreciate way more than him telling me some made up thing on the spot.
I'm hesitant to throw all language teaching etiquette under the bus but certainly in my experience there are a lot of misconceptions as you say. I unwittingly achieved an effectively native level of fluency in two languages growing up (in addition to my native language) and I can with confirm the common factor was definitely mass immersion (absolutely focus on immersion guys!). Strangely enough no teacher ever seemed to be aware of this. I can only imagine what they were telling their other students.
When I studied language didactics we were taught that input is crucial to learning a language. Ideally you should learn the language by staying in a country where it is spoken. But if you teach a language for, say, three hours a week to a class of fifteen year-olds, how much input can you actually submit them to? Not a lot. So teaching grammar is a great shortcut. How many kids will learn German verb conjugation without formal grammar instruction? It also doesn't help that most of them aren't that interested in learning the language to begin with. And the kids that actually are interested seek out the language in their spare time so they get both instruction and input.
@@HlewagastizHoltijaz Exactly! It's obvious that immersion is crucial. The more you're immersed in the language the easier the learning process (most of it happens subcounsciously). The problem is, not everybody has the same opportunity to expose themselves to the language but they still want to learn languages and communicate.
I want to drive something home from your video: being attentive to how native speakers speak is really the key to all of this. An immersive approach to learning will do no more for you than many other approaches to learning if you don't pay attention. You may be able to get to the point where you have good comprehension but if you are not thinking about and paying attention to how natives speak and write and how you speak and write in comparison, you are just going to get stuck.
Yes, I've seen people that their comprehension is good, but their accent and pronunciation is just shit. Lingüistic narcicism is a thing (The idea that a person learning a foreign language has no accent at all when he obviously has, and thus preventing him from improving.
Personally I’ve found it a big help to talk to my teacher. He speaks Korean, Japanese and English, and is also learning Spanish. Sometimes it’s hard for him to explain things but I do find him a massive help.
Indeed. I'd also like to add that knowing a language and teaching it are completely different sets of skills. To teach a language effectively, you don't only need an intuitive understanding of how it works, but the ability to spot differences between it and your students' native tongue in order to draw conclusions about the reasons behind the mistakes they make. Because a lot of the beginner and intermediate level mistakes learners of foreign languages make can be explained by examining the structure of their native tongues. My native tongue is Arabic. The syntax is almost opposite to that of Japanese to the extent that you can sometimes translate back and forth between the two by simply starting from the end and working your way back up. This means that although I've had a broad understanding of Japanese grammar for the longest time, I struggled with spontaneous speech because the longer the sentence was the harder it became for me to forsee how its structure is ought to be because that's simply not the way my brain was trained to work. This also meant that in order for me to truly have a great command of the language, I didn't only need to study grammar points and memorize vocabulary lists, but change the very lense through which I see the world. Right now I'm still stuck at the phase where I have to either form the complete thought inside my head before expressing it, or talking in bits and bytes while going back to make amendments as I speak. However, ever since I've became aware of what was really holding me back, progress became regular.
@@Arctagon Well in spanish we call it intonation, that can go up and down and change the meaning of words. I don't know if it's similar in japanese. This video illustrates a little bit. ua-cam.com/video/H577slU01_Q/v-deo.html
I see what you mean now. Pitch-accent and intonation are two different concepts. Intonation is the way in which pitch changes over the course of a sentence, and, as far as I know, a universal trait in human languages. Pitch-accent, on the other hand, is a system of pitch patterns limited to individual words which is used to distinguish them semantically, and, as far as I know, a concept that only exists in a handful of languages.
I agree 100% what you said, teachers try to give advice about learning foreign languages but they didn't even master one, and if they know more than one language, it's just in a basic level. So they don't have the experience and the struggle of learning foreign languages.
Teachers should provide tools for students to learn their target languages rather than teaching them grammar. I mean, you write an essay and your teacher can correct it. The teacher will give you some feedback, but remember this the student wants to learn the language, the student has to make an effort and no-one can speak the language for you. Teachers can come in handy to a certain extent: Correct your mistakes, explain to you something unclear, but the most part is on you. I am talking about good teachers, not those who teach you a language in the traditional way. Fill the gaps - that is boring.
Just got done with my first iTalki lessons today, go to UA-cam, and then I see that thumbnail lmao I'll definitely keep this in mind going forward, though. Really good vid
Great tips. I'm a native English speaker and a language enthusiast myself. Learners of English ask me all kinds of questions about English which I often have no idea how to answer!!
@@vemamimlinguarussa hahah I just browsed your channel and it's pretty interesting. You got one more subscriber. Eu escrevi em inglês pra galera se interessar tbm kkk. Bom trabalho!
I took a Japanese class at my university a few years ago taught by a Japanese woman and she had some frustrating policies about learning Japanese. My Japanese level was much higher than the class so I was always wanting to use the more advanced grammar and vocabulary that I knew but she would scold me for veering outside of the confines of the material we were studying. She told students not to learn Japanese from material outside of class because it would corrupt our knowledge. Somehow it doesnt occur to people how many hundreds of years it would take to become fluent sticking the couple hundred words or so we would learn in a semester
Matt I have a specific but in my opinion "hot" question which most of us would find interesting. Me and a lot of MIA viewers are at least almost fluent in English. For me understanding is a no-brainer, even if I watch science, politics or law stuff I almost never have problems. Now the thing: My accent sucks terribly... I am not happy at all with the way I pronounce words, vocab choice, etc... I think this developed at school and work, where I was/am regularly forced to output in Englisch. I mean everyone can understand me but as you said: "being understood and sounding native are different things". Really hope you could make a VOD regarding this topic, since I think a lot of people would benefit from that.
This is very true, most people sound not native probably because people tell that it is not important, the same way people tell japanese pitch accent is not important aka flat. I think the only way to correct this is by reading aloud properly, and i mean lots of reading, starting from the most beginner level like pronouncing alphabet. It's a tough work, most people won't even bother to, learning all over again, who's up for that?
Adults are often not very good at imitating sounds like children. That's why becoming intimately familiar with the International Phonetic Alphabet is a must for any serious adult learner. Always check IPA transcription in a dictionary, even if you think you know the pronunciation of a particular word. You're going to be surprised quite often. For example, words like "off" and "of" may look very similar, but they usually sound very different like /ɔf/ and /əv/. If you know the IPA, you can also find good articles about each sound on Wikipedia with comprehensive explanations and language comparison tables. It may look intimidating at first, but you'll get used to it quickly and it will help you improve your accent in any language because it's universal. And always stick to one dialect/accent until you're good at it. For example, if you try to learn American English, always use American English dictionaries to avoid mixing things up with British English and vice versa.
@ロマン I don't agree with the second one. I've met people who learned english around 20's and be fluent after about 5 years, also the guy said that he started thinking in english, even had a dream in english. So yeah, no..
My mom is a teacher. She has to teach english and swedish. She can have basic conversations in english but she is not as fluent as I am. I tried talking with her about good ways to learn languages but she doesn't listen... she has the traditional teacher approach with little word tests and extensive grammar reading. I beliebe that with that approach you can get on a basic conversation level but you won't ever get fluent that way and it takes a lot more time and energy. I'm now learning german and really so far the best thing I have done in order to learn has been playing minecraft with a 9 years old german girl. And also reading a book. Though with the book my mom always teases me like: "how come you say you are not good in german, yet you read a book?"
Tbh, I don't find any point in using iTalki. I can always speak to native language speakers through Discord and online/co-op games. We talk for hours, sometimes for over 12 hours, while playing a game and having fun. Completely free of charge. That's how I practised my English speaking skills and how I plan to practise my Japanese speaking.
@@MrBlack156 I'm not referring to one particular Discord server. I'm talking any Japanese server relating to any co-op game. Terraria, Minecraft, etc. Make a google search (in Japanese) looking for a server of a co-op game that you have an interest in playing with natives.
The BEST use of Native speakers (from places like iTalki) is for conversation practice. To learn the language itself, apart from conversation (which is like over 50%), you should learn from people who have learned multiple languages AND it's their native language. So if you want to learn Japanese, take lessons from a Japanese native speaker who also has learned English and/or Spanish and/or whatever language.
Not really. For example, I'm Italian, I've learned German and English and therefore I'm perfectly able to explain those grammars, as I've been studying them for years. However, I haven't touched an Italian grammar book since school. I wouldn't be able to explain WHy we use one verb or the other, or even some article rules and exceptions. I could do that in English or German, but not in my mother language. The only way to teach something is to study it beforehand, even if it's the grammar of your native language.
@@dianas7429 Exactly. I've learned English and French but I still have zero idea how to teach Chinese, which is my native language. Teaching a language to foreigners requires proper training.
That's something I learned hard way while learning German from natives. They have their obsolete ways of teaching and no thought about how foreigners think
Right? I'm trying to learn German too. Man, it's so confusing sometimes. So many words that mean the same but must be used in different contexts. For example, entscheiden, entschließen, wählen, auswählen... Everything can be translated as "to choose" 🤷♀️ I'm married to a German and very often he can't really explain those differences. When it comes to grammar, they also don't know that much from level B2 on.
@@vs9400 I passed the B2 German exam. My best advice is not to think in English much. Try to figure out for yourself when to use those words. Ausswählen/aussuchen- Ja die Nuancen. Let me recommend an app to you- Reverso in context- This app might help you. Sentences in context. There are some videos on UA-cam explaining the meaning of these four words. learn them by reading german definitions and not English definitions. Well, Reverso is a good option because you can read sentences in two languages.
@@Theyoutuberpolyglot " _learn them by reading german definitions and not English definitions._ " Very good advice. I've noticed that a lot of people don't realize that there's often no direct translation for many words in different languages. What you see in bilingual dictionaries are often just approximate translations taken out of context. As soon as your vocabulary is good enough to roughly navigate through written text in a foreign language, you should immediately switch to monolingual dictionaries in that language. For German, _Langenscheidt Wörterbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache_ is a good start.
I’ve only ever studied with native speakers who are certified tutors. Most know their language really well and are actually trained to teach. They also have unmatched intuitive knowledge of their language. Sometimes it’s more important to sound natural rather than correct.
From my experience, the best tutors are the ones willing to say when they aren't sure or will look it up. I have a tutor who does just that. I also know he's a language learner who is still trying to master English himself. So I think having a teacher like that helps in that he understands the struggle of language learning. I personally do the same thing for my Japanese friend who is trying to learn English. I learned long ago I know English but don't usually understand why I say things the way I do. So anytime I am asked a question, I always look up the grammatical reason why and then try to re-explain it to her in a simpler way.
I think it’s because a lot of people that learn Japanese absolutely love the language and the culture, while many people that learn English do it as a necessity or because it is a globalized language. Less passion= less effort in their accent. Many people that learn English just want to be understood rather than being native level.
Seriously? I saw this myth addressed in Dogen's video the other day and kinda thought he could've been exaggerating in order to draw attention to the importance of accent, which certainly seems to be neglected. What these teachers meant when they said that? Did they imply Japanese lacks any accent whatsoever, pitch or stress?
I took a few private lessons and even though I was just starting to learn Japanese, I remember the teacher spending time trying to teach me the difference in the pronunciation between bridge and chopsticks. I had a hard time telling the difference between hashi and hashi. I also remember spending lots of time saying ra ri ru re ro.
@@nomadicmonkey3186 The truth is a lot more innocent. Explanation of pitch accent is just different in Japanese. For e.g. according to them the "accent" on the word is when the pitch goes from high to low. If you do some wierd illegal stuff like go from high to low to high again to them it sounds like you're deliberately singing out your words or something in stead of naturally saying it in a "flat" manner ( If you've seen dogen's lessens you'll notice for 4 mora words and beyond the longest part of the pitch accent would be the flat part, since the 4 patterns are mostly defined by when is there an upstep and a down step. If you're fluctuating in a wierd manner instead of going high and staying high when you should or going low and staying low , or downstepping to early in the odaka pattern it sounds like you're not being "flat" to them)
I remember when I visited my host family in France, I was asked about how to pronounce "cicada." There are lots of cicadas in France and not any in the state of WA. I never actually heard the word, but I've read it before. So I told him it was pronounced "Ky-cada," but he had the correct pronunciation, "Si-cada." Now there's someone who thinks that "cicada" is pronounced differently than it is, perhaps even correcting his fellow French friends because a native speaker told him it was pronounced a different way.
Great video, man 👍 I’ve studied languages for years and while language exchange with native speakers has been one of the most useful tools ever in developing my fluency after learning the basics, I can definitely confirm that *most* native speakers do not actually understand the details of their own language and, well, basically everything you said in the video had some truth to it! In fact, I have learned so much about my own native language from talking to so many foreigners, being asked questions I’d never thought about and thinking a lot and/or looking up answers, watching English-teaching videos in order to pass on good ones to friends learning it, etc. We just speak our own language. We don’t intimately “get” it. I don’t find much like this out there. I think a lot of teachers tend to be too optimistic thinking that warnings of negative aspects of learning will demotivate people. I think you gave valuable, honest advice. 👍
I have a best friend from Spain that moved to Norway for 4 years ago and I teach her Norwegian and she teaches me Spanish, it helps us both❤️ I learnt English from when I was 6 till 18 so of course I can already speak it, but my friend knows it was hard learning Norwegian and I know it was hard learning Spanish, and now we are both helping each other and speak relatively well, of course she speaks better Norwegian than I speak Spanish because we live in Norway but I can keep a conversation without problems❤️
Your comment about seeking language advice from native speakers is very inspiring. I think most language learners, including me, tend to believe that native speakers are 'authority' in the language they are good at and there is no way that we can challenge them because we can never be a native like they are. I have been asked questions about my native language and I could not explain well enough because there are so many things come so natural to me and I have never thought of why I spoke or use certain words in certain ways until I met a person asking me to tell him/her why. Since I could not give him/her a satisfactory answer, I kind of 'more understanding' when some teacher told me 'Well, native tend to speak it in this way, no reason' but in fact there is a reason, he just doesn't know.
I just found your UA-cam channel few days ago and after watching one single video, immediately, knew I had to be subscribed! What and AWESOME work you're doing, Matt. I'm a English learner and after 6 months really focused on English I'm feeling lost. I'm full of motivation, however, lack of guidance sort of discourage me and pushes me out of road, feeling like I don't know where to going. Matt, I'll appreciate if you give me some guide I can follow or in which order I should watch your videos and then I'll try to figure out how to apply everything onto English. Thank you for everything you are giving to this community.
I recommend starting with the overview on the site; it functions as a bird-eye's view of all my ideas: massimmersionapproach.com/table-of-contents/stage-0/overview/
This is an amazing video. I've been studying several languages, and have a lingusitics degree, and I've noticed many times that native speaker answer without knowledge of language learning or the grammar of their language, or out of agenda (how things SHOULD be said according to the academy vs how people actually speak). Thank you for this clarifying, enlightening video
UA-cam is like The Shawshank Redemption: pressure and time. Making really good videos is like using your rock hammer with more force: yes it works a bit better, but it's still not as effective as just having been around longer and making more videos. Look at Steve Kaufmann - very little effort in his videos; he just spends like 5 minutes making a one minute point, but he has been putting out 2 videos a week for like 10 years haha, and he's got 200K subs. Luca: much better videos (IMO) but far less of the them: 100K subs. Matt vs Japan: Great videos, a lot of them but only been putting out regular content for 2 years: 17K subs.
If I were to venture a guess, it might be due to the fact that Matt's material is quite high-level and not really geared towards the traditional mass consumption. People are always going to be interested in flashy, shorter videos and much fewer would go for anything that requires a longer attention span to absorb. I devour Matt's every explanation and analogy and think he's great. He articulates my own thoughts so eloquently. I teach English to Thai learners (without any formal teaching qualification whatsoever) and I'm always thinking about the most effective way of teaching them or demonstrating a point. Matt's videos organise my random thoughts into something much more structured and tangible/applicable. I don't wish I'd come across him sooner, because at the point where I am now, I can understand him fully and do not mind sitting through his long videos for they make complete sense to me.
@@daysandwords Great point. Another factor to add is whether the UA-camr has any viral videos reaching millions of views, which could rack up the number of subscribers. An example is Polyglot Stories. She only has 10 videos as of this writing, but she has 240k subs.
Key point here: 0:45 He's specifically saying the native speakers that *have not* mastered a second language. I can confirm this because the advice that has helped me a lot is from native speakers that have mastered a 2nd or 3rd language, so they know all the struggles and the process of learning a new language.
This reminds me of when I was teaching English for Berlitz in Japan. Students mostly followed a curriculum and when they hit the halfway point or completed a book, we had to take five minutes to recommend ways to self study for that student based on their individual needs. As a language nerd who had studied languages for almost 20 years on and off but more on, I was totally up for it. But apparently most teachers felt totally unqualified and had no idea what to say. But they’re told that’s not an option they have to just make something up and sound authoritative. A perfect example of when you shouldn’t listen to the native speaker. I’m sure it happens all the time in other language programs too.
This video is so meaningful for me considering I also have just finished my first year in univeristy taking "language" classes and assuming that a native speaker is the most "trustworthy" or "valuable" source to learn from. Thank you so much! This is such a mindset switch for me, but it makes so much sense and also gives me a lot of relief.
大賛成です！（英訳をあとで書きます）I will write my opinion both in Japanese and English. 「外国語を習得していないネイティヴ」は，無意識に母語を話しています。 学習法や，なぜそう言うのかなど，分析的な解答は得られません。 ですが状況に応じた自然な表現など，ネイティヴだから分かることもあります。 知りたい内容に応じて，アドバイスを求める相手を選ぶことが必要だと思います。 「ぼく(僕)」には自分を指す場合と，小さな男の子を指す場合があります。 頭高アクセントの僕は，小さな男の子を表すと思います。 たとえば小学１先生ぐらいの男の子は，自分のことを頭高アクセントで僕と言います。 その子に対して「僕，いくつ？」と聞くような場合も，頭高アクセントです。 年齢が高くなるにつれて平板，もしくは尾高になるのではないでしょうか。 I totally agree with you, Matt! Native speakers who haven't mastered a foreign language speak their own language only unconsciously. They can't give you analytical answers to questions such as "How can I learn Japanese?" or "Why do you use the expression?". But they can tell whether what you say sounds natural to them. So you need to think who you are going to ask according to what you want to know. I think "Boku" has two different meanings. One is to refer to a young boy and the other to refer to yourself (male). If you say "Boku" in the atamadaka accent, you are talking about a small boy. A first grade boy would call himself "Boku" in the atamadaka accent. You would call him "Boku" in the atamadake accent when you ask him, "How old are you?" I think as a boy grows up, he calls himself "Boku" in the odaka (tail-pitched) accent.
Interesting point and I've got to admit it makes sense. In my experience as a non native English teacher naitives are invaluable in helping students overcome their speaking barrier. There's some kind of magic to them :))) For me that's probably the main reason why it's worth hiring a native English speaker trained in ELT.
Omg Thank you!!! I had to learn the hard way with Chinese. Now, I see why we don't actually learn a language in school because we only learn from a textbook. I'm not fluent yet but I am at an intermediate level. I truly started learning Chinese at 21 so age does not matter.
AGREED! I cannot get over how much I learned about how English works, by learning a different language. Learning a second language really increases your understanding of you L1
Hmmm. I don't think the video is specifically talking about language learning in general, but rather the workings of said language that come naturally to native speakers but can't be explained by them. Edit: Okay, so I've just listened to more of the video and it _is_ in fact talking about language learning in general, that said, I do think that needing to work at understand the workings of a language will equip a teacher with more skill to teach that language.
This is so true, I used to teach English in Taiwan and certain questions I couldn’t answer and had to ask the Taiwanese teacher why the grammar was the way it is, she knew cause she had learned it as an adult, I didn’t cause it’s my native language. I think there’s a similar problem with getting advice from someone who’s learned a language very easily, because they are talented they could have leaned in any way and still have been successful. I’ve just uploaded a video talking about this also, and how I learned Chinese as a deaf person.
My [Vietnamese] wife asks me questions about English. I can for sure tell her the answer, often answer why, sometimes I can even track the gut feeling to a rule, but often enough I don't why it is the way it is. Also as a music teacher I can relate to the music analogy. I feel like you can really only teach what you had trouble learning (maybe that's an exaggeration). The problems I had to battle and struggle and fight to overcome I already know the best and quickest way to help my students as I was very deliberate in that process. Something that came easy, it's a matter of looking and seeing what I'm doing and then teaching that. They're definitely different processes.
This was really interesting! I wasn’t sure what kind of things you were going to say to back up your statement because I’ve heard this same statement but not with any reasons behind it. I really agree with you. Sometimes I think learning from someone who learned the languages really well is better at the beginning and learning from a native is better later on. Depending on their own experience with language learning.
Excellent analysis. I'm glad you mentioned that it's not just the average native speaker who is the problem, but also so-called "professionals" who are monolingual and have no real knowledge about how we acquire languages.
100% true. People almost react like it's blasphemy to say this. But it's simply true. Also, not only on italki and HelloTalk and so on, but that's also one of the reason why most Japanese classes you can take freaking suck. The teacher is generally a random Japanese person (mostly a woman) who absolutely doesn't have any deeper understanding of her native tongue. (Which is in itself totally fine, I also couldn't teach German, my native language - but don't become a 'teacher' then)
@@Radescha Hab ich nicht. :-) Ich treibe mich auf allen möglichen Channels rum, die irgendwas mit Lernen im Allgemeinen und Sprachen lernen im Speziellen zu tun haben. ^^ Neue Inspirationen sind immer schön.
I dont know how it works in germany but where I'm from in order to teach classes at a reputable institution or a school/uni, you need a degree, specialization, qualification etc. They dont just wander around town and pick up the first Japanese person they find and go "You wanna make 100 bucks mate?"
@@LeoSkyro Are you sure? From what I've heard, it's not that much different on the other side of the pond. In the Volkshochschule (I don't think a word for that exists, it's a school for continuing non-credit education of adults in Germany and other countries), literally 9 out of 10 teachers have 0 background except being a native speaker. And even at my university, while we had two professors, other courses were held by, in all honesty, rather random native speakers. They did have some degree I guess, but either not anything relevant like Japanese as a foreign language, or if they did, it sure as hell didn't show.
Thinking native speakers are the ultimate authority. This is an example of what I call "common dumb" it's one of those things most people mistakenly assume to be common sense.
Yeah there definitely are some common dumb: 1. Flossing is good for your dental health 2. BMI is a good measure of metabolic health 3. A calorie is a calorie (no matter if it comes from fat, protein, comeplex carbs, or simple carbs; given that you get fewer calories than calories you use, you must lose fat.) I know I went on a tangent, but I frustrates me to no end that so many people believe in unfounded beliefs or even think to question the logic.
I have a rebuttal of your rebuttal of the rebuttal: athletes can improved drastically working with biomedical engineers (who themselves are rarely even elite amateur athletes) on aspects of their sports that don't require much athleticism (i.e. free throws, breathing, getting up after knocked down). This is why we should be able to rely on monolingual researchers who do really interesting research on language acquisition and how to apply that information to a classroom. But I get it. You're saying, the whole field in filled with people who have neither experience nor evidence and since evidence is harder to come by, let's bet on the people with experience. I think the bigger problem might be that language teachers are trained in 'presenting information in a classroom-setting' rather than language acquisition. Their certificates, master's, and Ph.Ds do give them a false sense of authority which is a disease.
I've been learning Spanish for about 20 years and my GF is a native speaker of both English and Spanish. I can explain Spanish grammar far better than she can because I had to learn it. She is infinitely better than me at speaking and listening to the language and is pretty much 100% fluent. She just doesn't know WHY things are the way they are. So yes, your video is right.
Jfc I’m so glad someone said this lmaoo. All I had to do was think about native English speakers and how many of them don’t even know English that well. 😂 unless they also learned a different language or a linguist I realized they rarely think about their language or why they say what they do. A lot of esoteric grammar is also just intuitive if they’re a native speaker, you can’t expect them to explain a lot of stuff that makes sense. The flat thing has also really annoyed me, because I grew up speaking Vietnamese so i can hear pitches in speech VERY easily. I never heard Japanese as flat in tone. Very even but not flat. I think what they *mean* is that they don’t usually stress syllables. Either they don’t recognize there is a difference between the pitch/strength or they dont realize that pitch is a part of the definition of evenness to English speakers.
Actually I had a very interesting experience with this. Spanish is my native language (and as you can see I'm learning English), and in Tiktok there is this American guy that had to learn spanish and makes some funny videos about it. One of these videos is about how the word "agua" (water, in spanish), is "feminine" and in spanish you need to know this because the article may change depending of the "sex" of the word, and I say "may", because with "agua" you use the article "El" that is supposed to be use with "male" nouns even though "agua" is "feminine". As you might guess, this has to be with a rule that I know since I study languages, but most native speakers don't. In comments everyone was confused, and it surprised me that when I wrote the explanation about this rule, most of them not only didn't believed me, but some even said "i was wrong" and tried to debate about it. I can totally see this hapening in a classroom.
While I generally agree with what you're saying, I've been impressed how many Japanese natives are able to explain what words mean (and I'm not talking about explaining simple words that you can show an object for or describe materialistically), much better than most people would be able to in my own country about my native language, myself included. I guess that has to do with how they learn/are taught 国語 (at least the older generations, I don't know if that's true for younger generations).
Fair point. I think the baseline of the video wasn't to say that Japanese are particulary bad at analysing their own language. Japanese language was just an example chosen because this is his personal experience. I also think that, when compared with other countries or languages, Japanese have in average a very decent level of understanding of their national language. As you said.
14:50 It's not like a polyglot would be able to explain that either, adjectival order is a very obscure part of English grammar that even most comprehensive English grammars wouldn't contain. Instead, you would have to look at linguistics research papers to find information about it. Furthermore, isn't your whole strategy not to focus too much on grammar rules. Like neither first or language speakers would probably know the ins and outs of case, tense, aspect, and mood. So the best way to figure out these types of things would just be exposure/input just like you, Steve Kaufmann, Steven Krashen, etc. all say.So probably not the best example for the answer.
I thought the same thing. Moreover, we have the internet. You can actually look up these grammar questions and compare what the authorities say. Native speakers are definitely not authorities on what is correct or not. English speakers always say things like "Do you want to go with my friend and I to dinner?" They think using "I" sounds correct. "With I" is ridiculously incorrect, but when there are words in between, native speakers often suddenly no longer can discern that it's incorrect. Since I speak other languages, I'm hyper-aware of these things. Another example is how people normally say "haven't drank, haven't ran, haven't sang" instead of using the past participle "haven't drunk, haven't run, haven't sung."
@@corynicolas3175 Part of sounding native is making the kinds of mistakes native speakers do (and none of the mistakes native speakers don't do). But if you want to sound professional, then making no mistakes is best. It just depends.
@@HoratioAccel Yes. This is something I've been fascinating with for decades. There are typical native mistakes and non-native mistakes. There are mistakes you would rarely or never hear a native speaker make and there are also mistakes that many or the majority of native speakers make. For example, in Spanish, make non-native speakers who are not fluent say "me llamo es" which you would never heard a native-speaker say. However, you hear native speakers say "traducí" and "más mejor" instead of "traduje" and "mejor." You constantly hear natives say "neva" instead of "nieva." A non-native error in Spanish may be "gracias por ayudándome" instead of "gracias por ayudarme" or "voy a ir con tú" instead of "voy a ir contigo." Examples of these typical native and non-native errors in English are: Can you helping me (non-native)? Where did you went (non-native)? He no is here (non-native). He don't can read English (non-native). Have you ever sang that song (native error)? Have you ever took Spanish (native error). He don't work (native error). He's helping my friend and I with that. (native error). The dog was ran over (native error). In fact, thanks for reminding me about this phenomenon. I think I'm going to make a video about it on my channel. It's a topic I was planning on covering for a long time.
Agreed. As a native English speaker, I've had so many "good questions" from L2 learners of English. It's made me more observant of English and why I say what I say the way I say it for sure. Also, I've had many questions about other languages that couldn't quite be answered with ease if at all. Most of my foreign language acquisition has been self-taught, and it has only gotten better by having native speakers around me to strengthen my skills.
Absolutely on point. Teaching is a skill. I had a guitar teacher earlier in life and a French teacher later in life and I didn’t gel with them and (incorrectly) concluded that I was just incapable of learning either of the things they were masters of. When I realized that they were “native“ to their areas of expertise but not “native” to teaching, I ceased believing I was “dumb.”
My favourite German teacher is from Iran. She obviously has mastered German but also my native language (English). She has an amazing ability to articulate concepts in the German language. I 100% agree that native speakers generally can't tell you why things are the way they are.
There is also sometimes a problem with "grammar nerds" which is that they can tend to focus too much on specific details of the language you are learning because it's interesting to them. Grammar nerd advice tends to put off beginner first-time language learners by swamping them with information while simultaneously not having any idea about how a learner should focus their effort, essentially giving too much of the wrong information at the wrong time.
Now that im on my asian language journey, i can say a lot of mandarin native speakers can't really help me, so i tend to go to non natives who was in my position. I think theres a give and take, for me having conversations with native speakers is better than trying to go the typical learning way
Superman's billiger Klon But seriously, lots of Americans also use adjectives when they should be using adverbs. I guess people get sloppy when they're using the language they're used to since they don't have to think about it as much.
@@Primalxbeast That's the problem. I don't want to sound noble or anything, but when I started to just talk with Americans online, I started to adopt the mistakes they make in their own language. But you are actually right, since I wanted to describe a verb, I had to use the adverb. Or I could have written: Explaining English grammar is easier for me than...
Honestly I'm Russian and whenever my foreign friend who studies Russian asks me "so how does this work" I'm like mate. Idk. I just know it and speak it lmao I dont know shit about my own language's grammar(Russian grammar is very complex tho often if a sentence is too long I confuse cases and conjunctions of words haha)
I speak Slovene, which is a Slavic language, just like Russian. We too have a lot of tenses and the word changes form depending on how you want to use it. We also have genders for everything (even it). Explaining is not that hard, but actually getting what I'm trying to explain is hard.
I think people have the top athlete/coach point backwards. Mediocre athletes make good coaches because they had to work hard at it. They had to implement skills and strategies that just came naturally to top athletes. So in this analogy, the mediocre athlete is like the person who has learned a second language and the top athlete is like the native speaker. You go to each one for different reasons which is to your point that native speakers can be good for certain advice but bad for other advice. I hope that all made sense. Great videos.
I remember Joey (The Anime Man) talking about how hard it is to handle all the, "What's the best way to learn Japanese?" or "How do I learn Japanese?" from viewers. He was raised bilingual. Asking a native speaker how to speak their language is like asking a bird how to fly a plane. The way they reached fluency, or flight in this case and the way you are going to achieve flight are so radically different that there are myriad pitfalls when asking for advice.
A lot of ESL teaching methodology resonates with YOUR theory, Matt. ESL teaching community even created super helpful monolingual dictionaries like the Longman dictionary for learners of English. Something you yourself want to replicate for learning Japanese.
I don't know about America, but from my experience in the UK, the TEFL courses are based off of Developmental and linguistic psychology, which in the large part follows the advice you give and the Eijatt style of learning. Japan in general is just really far behind, and there is a base of teachers that learned a long time ago and don't know the new methods. Further, most people taking a TEFL course and not linguists or developmental psychologists, so they don't really properly comprehend the stuff they are learning. Another rebuttal I would make is that there are many people that misattribute how they learn a language. Conversely native speakers are aware of school system's teaching of their native language. Children with no schooling would speak very differently to someone with education, and even among the different levels of education there are different styles of talking. As long as this is understood, and the student takes control of the learning process, a native speaker can work as an acceptable teacher
It's incredible that I have come to this conclusion a while ago. I tend to spend most of my time thinking things over and over, and it was one of those things that made question native speakers abilities to understand what learning a new language actually feels like.
Good video, again... :) I think you are right about the sports coach analogy. True there are some great sports coaches (martial arts instructors, etc.) that may not be the most talented athletes. However there are other key differences: (1) coaching methodology tends to follow what has produced results in the past and (2) even coaches who are not the most talented athletes have 'made the journey'. They know what it's like to train themselves. A professional ice hockey coach, for example, probably hasn't taken a class at university telling him 'this is how players get better' and then walks into his job never having played hockey before or never having experienced training himself.
When I began to learn Spanish, I took classes. The head teacher was a native Spaniard and she had tought the Indian teachers how to teach Spanish. My Indian teachers indeed tought some really important concepts.
I agree with the title 1000%. My wife is Japanese native, English fluent. She doesn't even correct me when I speak incorrect Japanese to her. She just says "so cute", "its always correct when you say it". Also when I try to practice conversation with her she'll use grammar + vocab way out of my current level (N3) and explaining things pretty poorly. Shes still helpful but I learned way more on my own than from her.
To add to your adjective order argument. There's even more that natives do here unconsciously just because in English 'i + a/o' sound is preferred to 'a/o + i' (like tick tock not tock tick). For example 'good little knife' fits the regular order rule but 'big bad wolf' doesn't. So as always you're spot on with your theories.
I can’t tell people why something doesn’t sound right and I’m very fluent in English as it is my Native language. Of course I’d think it’s the other way around with Japanese as well.
I have been imagining trying to explain to someone why we use the word "was" in the sentence, "I wish I was an astronaut." It's not talking about the past. So why is it "was"? Something to do with the subjunctive mood, maybe? But I would not be able to explain it coherently.
Non-STEM college courses always feel like a fraud. You can almost always find a youtube channel more informative than your college professors. It’s really unfortunate considering the exorbitant cost of college.
I tell my guy friends the same thing about dating advice. Don't ask women how to be more successful at dating women. Ask men who are successful at dating women. You wouldn't ask a fish how to catch a fish, they would tell you to just wait around and suddenly one day you're caught.
Hi, Matt-san I've just started to be a tutor on italki and I thought 'oh no am I not supporting students at all ?' when I found this video though Dôgen-san's channel this morning. But, I'm so relieved, I am okay enough to be a tutor 😊 according to this( I mean, my skill is to be sharpen of course! ) Thank you for making this video :))
Taking like a native is different than talking like a language textbook. It takes a lot of immersion to emulate native talking. We are not even addressing the thorny issue of accent.
I live in an area with both native english and spanish speakers. A significant number of people here learn a mix of both (Spanglish) as young children, and these are the same people who end up teaching spanish classes in the schools.
Except that the primary purpose of the JET Program isn't for ALTs to teach English grammar rules or to give Japanese people advice on how to learn English. They are there so that Japanese students can have experiences interacting with foreigners and using English to communicate with a native speaker, to hear natural pronunciation, to learn about foreign culture, to help them with their confidence, to help motivate them to be more interested in English and foreign countries and maybe above all, to build stronger connections between Japan and foreign countries through personal relationships (soft power) etc. if you want to talk about wasting money with regard to English education, look at the entire system of English education in Japan, most of the Japanese English teachers are not very good at English and the way that Japanese people learn English in schools in general is pretty terrible. Their English education system is one of the worst in the world, basically the total opposite of MIA.
@@anewhope538 Did you mean to reply to me or to the original poster? Bitter about what? I'm not sure why you think I am bitter, or what you think I am bitter about. Also not an ex-ALT. Regardless, ad hominem.
@@anewhope538 what? lol he's right and nothing about his post seemed bitter just realistic. it's just for cultural exchange and giving japanese kids a chance to hear real english.
*0:00**-Introduction* On the surface, it might seem like native speakers are the ultimate authority on a given language, and because of this, a lot of language learners will seek out native speaker teachers in order to help them learn their target language. Now although it is true that native speakers can be extremely valuable within the greater process of mastering a foreign language, it's also true that a lot of times, native speakers give out quite a bit of bad language learning advice, so in this video, I'm gonna be talking about why you shouldn't listen to native speakers' language learning advice, why native speakers are not necessarily true authorities on their language, and what mindset you should approach native speaker tutors with in order to get the most bang for your buck. Now before I jump in, I just want to clarify that when I say "native speaker", I'm specifically referring to native speakers who have not mastered a foreign language, so for example, if I'm trying to learn Japanese, then I'm talking about Japanese people who were born and raised in Japan and haven't fully mastered another foreign language like English, because if we're talking about someone who has mastered a foreign language, then not only are they a native speaker of a given language, but they're also a successful language learner, and this is gonna be a distinction that I go into later on in the video, and I also just want to clarify that when I say "native speaker", I'm talking about both professionally trained teachers, for example, if you take a college class, there might be a native speaker who has actually been educated in teaching that language as a foreign language, but I'm also talking about everyday people, for example, maybe you just have some friends who speak the language. *1:35**-Language learning advice vs. language-specific information* So for the sake of this video, I'm gonna be making a distinction between language learning advice and information related to specific languages, so when I say "language learning advice", I'm talking about the overall methodology with which you approach the acquisition of a foreign language, so this would be things like "Is it better to focus on listening ability or speaking ability?" or "If I want to improve my speaking ability, how should I spend my time in order to do that; should I be speaking to myself in the mirror; should I be recording videos of myself; should I be talking to people on the street; how should I go about learning vocabulary; should I use a frequency list; should I use Anki?", etc, so these are things related to "How do you actually go about acquiring a foreign language in the big picture?", and then on the other hand, we have information about specific languages, so I'm talking about things like "What does a given specific word mean; what does a specific grammar structure mean; is a given sentence grammatical or not; how is a given word pronounced?", so these are kind of just individual factoids about a given specific language that can be considered correct or incorrect, so basically, what I gonna be arguing in this video is that when it comes to language learning advice, you really don't want to pay attention to anything that native speakers say. On the other hand, when it comes to specific information about a language, it can be very useful to ask a native speaker, but you have to take everything they say with a kind of grain of salt and it's important to not just believe everything they say wholesale because sometimes, native speakers can be a little bit misguided in certain areas.
I relate to your uni/college story. I did Spanish at uni (just for one semester, I wanted a language elective and it was the only one they offered). I love languages and spent easily 6hrs a day either directly learning or immersing. I also speak French which helped. I am dyslexic and I was entitled to extra support but my teacher literally accused me of not being dyslexic because I was (not surprisingly) doing better than everyone else in my class (except for a girl whose mother was Equadorian), who were probably only doing Spanish for the 2hrs a week that we had class. She had no conception of the work that I put in and the fact that this was not my first additional language, just acted like my 2x diagnoses (I had to get another one when moving countries) were not true and refused to allow me extra time on assessment, completely ignoring all the times I would randomly mix up words and letters- not forgetting M/F but literally just forgetting letters or putting them in the wrong place, and would never be able to finish extended written response in the given time. Her English was terrible which made it harder to explain tbh. Other students said it was hard to communicate with her as well. Glad I only had one semester with her.
I can definitely attest to this. I teach English as a foreign language, which I started really learning when I was 15, and I feel quite confident in my teaching abilities. On the other hand, I've had the experience of teaching my own native language, Portuguese, to foreigners, and I basically sucked. (Take into account that I have a college degree in both languages.)
Man, this is the second video I saw of your channel. I love your tips! I remember a lot of tips from my english teacher which were really bad, even though she learnt the language. It's probably a "chain" of bad advices that started from their teacher, or even before, idk. Anyway, I'm starting to learn french and your videos are really helpful. I know my English is not good enough, but I've never really enjoyed to learn it, although it's useful (and your videos are an actual proof of it).
Ok, so first of all, and this is coming from my perspective as a multiple-language learner and native language teacher myself (Spanish), I think this whole idea about natives (and here I'm talking about native trained teachers) not being good teachers is simply misleading. There are great non-native teachers, and there great native teachers as well, one does not exclude the other. Second of all, there are as many types of students as there are types of teachers, so the debate about whether we are able to learn a second or third language in the same way we did our first one, would have to take into account many, many different variables, ultimately this comes down to what your experience has been regarding language learning, and yes, there are many lousy teachers all around the world, and yes, I do think it comes as an asset to me, to have mastered other languages when teaching my native language. That being said, I also know great teachers who've never mastered a second language, and, depending on the type of student you are, I'm sure they could fit your needs I do agree that for the most part, students (mostly those who attend group lessons) tend to be very passive in their approach to languages, they just expect information to be fed to them and so this process does, very much indeed, differ from the far more natural process of learning acquisition as a child. Now, once you feel comfortable with your own learning process and you've managed to turn it into a much more active thing, it's so much easier to rely on, in fact, not only trained language native teachers (which to be is imperative, intonation and accent-wise) but also just native speakers, because this time you're not expecting everything to be handed out to you, it's you picking up the pieces, putting the puzzle together, making assumptions, experimenting, listening closely, etc. That to me, is the beauty of language learning, and it's, not only the most satisfying way of doing it, but also, the most effective, that is of course, for me.
agreed. we live our whole lives being immersed in our native language. we just can't help but learn simply through experience. language learning is a skill and requires specific info that lets lets you learn faster and more explicitly.
I'd actually go even further and look for a native speaker who's already managed to learn a third or fourth foreign language in their adult life. L2 is often acquired through years of exposure that begins in childhood. Consequently, millions of non-native English speakers have absolutely no idea how to learn a foreign language because they learned it from practice while being forced to attend a class at school, playing games, watching Hollywood movies and interacting online. Sure, their results may vary greatly because of talent, intelligence or dedication but still their learning path may remain unknown. I learned the most about acquiring foreign languages when I decided to learn Italian (my 4th foreign language) at home without classes because I was completely on my own and had to self motivate and find ways to move forward. Made lots of errors on the way and wasted tens of hours but learned a lot about the process and applied it to the next foreign language with ease. Great content Matt!
TIMESTAMPS:
01:35 - Language learning advice vs. language-specific information
03:06 - Language learning is a skill (which most natives don't have)
06:19 - Why there’s so much bad advice
08:10 - Even professional teachers often don’t understand language acquisition
12:12 - Rebuttal: “But top sports coaches often were never top athletes”
13:44 - Most natives are bad at articulating how their language works
15:29 - Natives will often give you false information
19:46 - How to properly utilize feedback from natives
22:16 - Conclusion
Sorry if the audio seems out of sync at times…… While editing, it’s hard to know when the audio’s out of sync and when my computer’s simply lagging.
WanderingDoc I write an outline, then speak off the top of my head while filming. I usually film many takes for each section, and then edit them together in post.
Matt, I'd Like to learn Japanese and as far as I know your channel It seems to be one of the or the single one who really could help me learning it effectively cause you know a lot about it, learn Japanese. I remember of got watched a video of yours with Steve Kaufmann and you said that you're almost 6 years on your journey. What I'm trying to ask you is... Is there a video on your channel where you explain how you began to learn it? A detailed video?
I Like pretty much of watch your videos and it'd be wonderful for me if you answer me!!
I know that you're probably busy but, I also would like to share you that I learned English with you... I'm gonna explain you that if you're with free time... Thank you so much for your patient to read it. It's important for me.
@@niltonkenneph3538 look up 'my ajatt journey' on his channel
@@shoogeveen Thank you so much bro... You helped me a lot!!
Very well explained thanks. Btw, first time here. Subbed! I like languages and learning them.
It's more like asking a person born rich how to get rich.
exactly
since they don't remember how they actually learned they might as well have been born fluent
that's the way i feel about my english ability tbh
In knowledge about the language? Yes. In language learning knowledge? Not at all.
yup cannot agree more native speakers just absorbed their native language
you said it
@@babygorl9541 some people have different beliefs but I think that people aren't born fluently, because first, I'm not American but I speak English very fluently ;v;
Couldn't agree more. As a native Japanese speaker I can articulate every fine difference in use as to when to use は and が as minutely and precisely as an average native English speaker can explain the adjective order in English or which of a(n)/the/ø one should use in a particular sentence. The answer is always "Yes" or "It just works."
Nomadicmonkey what is the difference between が and は? How do I know when to use them?
that's true of any educated native speaker.
Learned Japanese for 7 years and I still fuck up when it comes to "Wa" and "Ga."
ah, really. I really hate Japanese people being such a arrogant like that, as a native Japanese speaker
You know I can tell when to use wa/ga of course but could NEVER tell their difference by 100% clear/logical explanation and reaching to the level that the non-native speakers are actually able to understand its logic perfectly... until Ive been told by one of my foreign friends who can speak 90% accurate Japanese("almost native" level), the best way to explain it for non-native speaker which I had never heard before but I literary surprised so much that how logical and sophisticated the explanation was and nodded a lot.
@PepperDayJack pac
買い物が好き
I like shopping.
買い物は好き
Basically I like staying at home. But I like shopping.
チョコレートが好き。
I like chocolate.
チョコレートは好き。
I don't like sweets except chocolate.
Yeah my Japanese friends can’t really explain things, they’re just like “I kinda just know this...”
Paul Denino my friends is japanese and speak 11 other languages XD but the problem is he can’t do anything when he is drunk at night
your friends are excellent people. they are aware of what they know and dont know. so many people dont know the difference. they therefore contsantly lie and mislead. to themselves, even, which is a vicious circle leading to them getting even dumber.
Fancy seeing a Cx member here
I felt this. Usually they give me so many examples and I just politely tell them I get it now - sometimes I actually understand it
@@KuroDeresu Is that the only time he'll give you "language lessons?"
You have a lot of Japanese books!
My six full bookshelves laugh.
@@Legendary_Detective-Wobbuffet wow you're so cool
@@Legendary_Detective-Wobbuffet wow you're legendary man
@@Legendary_Detective-Wobbuffet based
Everyone other than the first dude (not OP; Kaz is a baller) is a legend. I love you guys.
Damn. This makes so much sense to me. It's abundantly clear to me why I'm not really qualified to "teach" English acquisition. I've been using various apps like HelloTalk or Busuu and correcting a learner's English. But virtually 80%+ of the time, I find myself looking up English grammar rules because I have no idea why some things sound strange or weird. (Now Google shows me English language learning ads 😂) And I end up second-guessing myself on what is the proper grammar of the sentence. I'm pretty sure I gave out some B.S. answers more than once. Thanks for pointing this out!
Man I can relate to looking up english grammar after correcting somebody's english. Matt did a great job articulating what ive been feeling recently about native speakers helping learners.
Well same here lol. I really became conscious of constructing sentences 😭
Me too! Got myself a copy of English Grammar for Dummies and learning so much
This first point is so true. As an iTalki teacher, I had one student who booked about 80% of my lessons. She was Chinese and her English was good (better than my best foreign language at the time) and she sometimes asked me stuff and I had to say "Your English is better than my Swedish, so you actually know more about this than I do." - and then there was the fact that Swedish is very near to English, versus English for her (being a long way from Chinese obviously).
Another thing to watch out for is what I call "hyper correction" which is when the native speaker feels that if one is being strict about their language, then it should be pronounced or should be written in a certain way that is in fact wrong. One example is in Swedish, when R and S occur together (which they do all the time), then 90% of Swedes will pronounce it "shh" and this is considered correct, and is written in text books, but I came across a teacher who tried to insist that I should say "rrr" and "sss" as separate sounds, which sounds freakin' crazy unless you are Finno-Swedish. An equivalent in English would be those people who think that "who" doesn't exist and it must always be "whom", when they actually have no idea how to use "whom" correctly.
I fell into this trap (which you call "hyper correction") myself before. I was trying to help a friend who is learning my native language and she repeatedly asked me which among a couple of choices sounded best. This is pretty trivial to answer as a native speaker and most of the times it was, but sometimes when there were multiple options that sounded fine to me, I would for some reason start to doubt my intuition and instead "think in terms of rules" (which, obviously, never works). If you're the native in such a situation, I think it's a good rule to set for yourself to only rely on your intuition and nothing else. Consciousness and language don't go well together.
Asking a native for language advice is kind of like asking a tall person how to be tall.
bingo
lol loooool
More realistic: asking a person who was always skinny how to lose weight.
@@lucassantossj no lol
Redbrows in a way it is, since you can’t become tall, but you can learn a language even if you aren’t a native speaker
My native language is italian. A friend asked me when to use “l’imperfetto” and when to use “il passato prossimo” (both are past tenses)
I was like... uuuhhhmmm i don’t know...
But then she showed me her worksheets and i could of course solve it without problems... and she got angry because i told her idk but could use it the right way... 😬
This is exactly like my boyfriend, he is Russian and moved to England when he was young and I am learning Russian. I know how your friend feels it's frustrating. >_
Esattamente!
Mama Mia Spaghetti Mario!
Le regole ci sono, semplicemente sono legate al contesto e non ad una regola logica. Se ti mettessi a riflettere sulla "regola" probabilmente ci arriveresti (non saresti precisa magari). Come Matt insegna, in lingua madre la grammatica suona come un "aaaah, ora capisco" e non un "ah, quindi usando l'imperfetto mi posso riferire ad azioni che ero solito fare con frequenza".
I feel that. My girlfriend is Filipina and they have at least 3 different ways to say "you" (ikaw, ka, and mo) and when i ask her when to use which one, shes like "idk it just sounds right" (facepalm)
Tbh, I also don’t remember how I learned the second language. Other than consuming content for 1000s of hours, it’s hard to evaluate what of what I did made how much of a difference, and it was a long time ago. That is to say that even if someone was successful at learning a language, they probably also won’t be correct about a lot of stuff. For example I can tell if something sounds wrong in english (my second language), but often I can’t explain exactly why.
Yeah, exactly. I have the same problem. English is my second language and there are a lot of things I can't explain because I never truly "learned" those things. Something might sound right or wrong but I can't tell why.
Was literally just thinking of this, I don't really remember how I learned english, It had to be from the countless hours of exposure to the language on the internet and other types of media. I'm currently learning a new language and I'm struggling, knowing english and my native language helps with the vocabulary but besides that, it feels like learning a new language for the first time
Same, English is my second language, but I suck at explaining things like tenses because I actually never used any of that while learning it. I kinda just learned it by listening to it.
In the process of us learning a 2nd language lets say “english”, Most of us probably aren’t being serious on learning it. We might be learning like the words and stuff. But for the grammar we indirectly learn it from other people speaking english.
So when we heard someone speak wrong english we can feel that the word is grammarly wrong but we don’t know how to explain it to anyone about their incorrect grammar because we barely studied anything about grammar in english (at least thats the case with me)
Hope that answers the question :)
Sorry for bad english ^_^
Same, I learned english through exposure, and I can speak it fluently, but in class, everyone expects me to get the best grades in English, but I can't score the best grade (a 10 in my country) because I don't know what are past tenses and shit like that, it's frustrating.
I've always said the same thing. Natives are good for pointing out what sounds right or wrong to them and what a native typically says or what they call something, but not language specific learning techniques. Ask a native Spanish-speaker how to form the imperfect subjunctive and they most likely won't even know what that is, although they use it naturally. I learned about how English worked (my native language) after studying other languages. Language learning (self study) is all about creating a continuous language learning environment and becoming obsessed with the language. You have to want to become part of the culture and community of those who speak the language. People don't realize all of the hours and experiences that native speakers have in their language. They have private tutors for years (mom, dad and siblings constantly talking around them and to them) and are sent to school for seven hours a day for 12 years (at least in the U.S.) where they hear and use the language in every class. They have to read, write, listen, speak and take tests constantly. Even in classes like P.E. and Math, they're learning and using the language. Adults don't invest that time in a foreign language. They also rarely completely stop speaking their native language. Adults also already have way more general knowledge than children so we obviously can learn some things much more quickly. The proof is always in the pudding. Listen to language learners who have reached high levels of fluency in the language. Each person's path is unique, but there are certain things we all had to do in order to learn, develop and master a foreign language.
I'm trying to imagine a traditional language teacher watching this video and going crazy about your ideas, which doesn't make any sense to their previous experience. I don't know why they think that shit they teach at school is supposed to work. That doesn't make sense!
Portuguese name in a Brazilian meme, about the Russian language, speaking English in a video about learning languages. Mr Worldwide himself.
@@chilael6892 lmao
@@robertleger4986 Yeah, man. I see what you mean
They think just by learning grammar, you will master a language.
The thing is you want to acquire the language naturally, not to analyse the language while you're speaking.
I hate grammar- Grammar doesn't let me speak naturally.
@@Theyoutuberpolyglot I also hate it
There are definitely occasions where I'll ask my Japanese teacher (who is, in my opinion, extremely fluent in English, even accent and pronunciation wise) why something is the way it is in Japanese, and if he genuinely doesn't know the answer he'll say that he doesn't know why, which I appreciate way more than him telling me some made up thing on the spot.
My German Teacher does this as well. It's refreshing when you know the teacher will be honest with you.
I'm hesitant to throw all language teaching etiquette under the bus but certainly in my experience there are a lot of misconceptions as you say. I unwittingly achieved an effectively native level of fluency in two languages growing up (in addition to my native language) and I can with confirm the common factor was definitely mass immersion (absolutely focus on immersion guys!). Strangely enough no teacher ever seemed to be aware of this. I can only imagine what they were telling their other students.
When I studied language didactics we were taught that input is crucial to learning a language. Ideally you should learn the language by staying in a country where it is spoken. But if you teach a language for, say, three hours a week to a class of fifteen year-olds, how much input can you actually submit them to? Not a lot. So teaching grammar is a great shortcut. How many kids will learn German verb conjugation without formal grammar instruction? It also doesn't help that most of them aren't that interested in learning the language to begin with. And the kids that actually are interested seek out the language in their spare time so they get both instruction and input.
@@HlewagastizHoltijaz Exactly! It's obvious that immersion is crucial. The more you're immersed in the language the easier the learning process (most of it happens subcounsciously). The problem is, not everybody has the same opportunity to expose themselves to the language but they still want to learn languages and communicate.
I want to drive something home from your video: being attentive to how native speakers speak is really the key to all of this. An immersive approach to learning will do no more for you than many other approaches to learning if you don't pay attention. You may be able to get to the point where you have good comprehension but if you are not thinking about and paying attention to how natives speak and write and how you speak and write in comparison, you are just going to get stuck.
yes!
Yes, I've seen people that their comprehension is good, but their accent and pronunciation is just shit. Lingüistic narcicism is a thing (The idea that a person learning a foreign language has no accent at all when he obviously has, and thus preventing him from improving.
This video is spot on. A hard pill to swallow for heavily viewed UA-cam language “teachers”.
Personally I’ve found it a big help to talk to my teacher. He speaks Korean, Japanese and English, and is also learning Spanish. Sometimes it’s hard for him to explain things but I do find him a massive help.
Indeed.
I'd also like to add that knowing a language and teaching it are completely different sets of skills.
To teach a language effectively, you don't only need an intuitive understanding of how it works, but the ability to spot differences between it and your students' native tongue in order to draw conclusions about the reasons behind the mistakes they make.
Because a lot of the beginner and intermediate level mistakes learners of foreign languages make can be explained by examining the structure of their native tongues.
My native tongue is Arabic. The syntax is almost opposite to that of Japanese to the extent that you can sometimes translate back and forth between the two by simply starting from the end and working your way back up.
This means that although I've had a broad understanding of Japanese grammar for the longest time, I struggled with spontaneous speech because the longer the sentence was the harder it became for me to forsee how its structure is ought to be because that's simply not the way my brain was trained to work.
This also meant that in order for me to truly have a great command of the language, I didn't only need to study grammar points and memorize vocabulary lists, but change the very lense through which I see the world.
Right now I'm still stuck at the phase where I have to either form the complete thought inside my head before expressing it, or talking in bits and bytes while going back to make amendments as I speak.
However, ever since I've became aware of what was really holding me back, progress became regular.
17:26 Fun fact: The Japanese name for 'pitch accent' is 高低アクセント, which literally means 'high-low accent'.
So it's like spanish?
According to Wikipedia, 'pitch-accent' in Spanish seems to translate literally to 'tonal accent' and 'musical accent'.
@@Arctagon Well in spanish we call it intonation, that can go up and down and change the meaning of words. I don't know if it's similar in japanese. This video illustrates a little bit.
ua-cam.com/video/H577slU01_Q/v-deo.html
I see what you mean now. Pitch-accent and intonation are two different concepts. Intonation is the way in which pitch changes over the course of a sentence, and, as far as I know, a universal trait in human languages. Pitch-accent, on the other hand, is a system of pitch patterns limited to individual words which is used to distinguish them semantically, and, as far as I know, a concept that only exists in a handful of languages.
I agree 100% what you said, teachers try to give advice about learning foreign languages but they didn't even master one, and if they know more than one language, it's just in a basic level.
So they don't have the experience and the struggle of learning foreign languages.
Teachers should provide tools for students to learn their target languages rather than teaching them grammar.
I mean, you write an essay and your teacher can correct it. The teacher will give you some feedback, but remember this the student wants to learn the language, the student has to make an effort and no-one can speak the language for you.
Teachers can come in handy to a certain extent: Correct your mistakes, explain to you something unclear, but the most part is on you. I am talking about good teachers, not those who teach you a language in the traditional way.
Fill the gaps - that is boring.
@@Theyoutuberpolyglot If you want to study the language by yourself, a basic understanding of grammar will come in handy.
Just got done with my first iTalki lessons today, go to UA-cam, and then I see that thumbnail lmao
I'll definitely keep this in mind going forward, though. Really good vid
Great tips. I'm a native English speaker and a language enthusiast myself. Learners of English ask me all kinds of questions about English which I often have no idea how to answer!!
Wait, there's a language youtuber who is not endorsed by Italki?
Yep. And I'm another one
@@vemamimlinguarussa hahah I just browsed your channel and it's pretty interesting. You got one more subscriber. Eu escrevi em inglês pra galera se interessar tbm kkk. Bom trabalho!
@@moisesgomes6191 Ué, tu é BR? Kkk, nossa!
um fato notável realmente
@@vemamimlinguarussa uP
I took a Japanese class at my university a few years ago taught by a Japanese woman and she had some frustrating policies about learning Japanese. My Japanese level was much higher than the class so I was always wanting to use the more advanced grammar and vocabulary that I knew but she would scold me for veering outside of the confines of the material we were studying. She told students not to learn Japanese from material outside of class because it would corrupt our knowledge. Somehow it doesnt occur to people how many hundreds of years it would take to become fluent sticking the couple hundred words or so we would learn in a semester
Omg I know exactly what you mean.... 😖 It's just frustration on a different level 😂
Matt I have a specific but in my opinion "hot" question which most of us would find interesting.
Me and a lot of MIA viewers are at least almost fluent in English. For me understanding is a no-brainer, even if I watch science, politics or law stuff I almost never have problems.
Now the thing: My accent sucks terribly... I am not happy at all with the way I pronounce words, vocab choice, etc... I think this developed at school and work, where I was/am regularly forced to output in Englisch. I mean everyone can understand me but as you said: "being understood and sounding native are different things".
Really hope you could make a VOD regarding this topic, since I think a lot of people would benefit from that.
my pronounciation is shit too.
unfortunately I can relate XD
This is very true, most people sound not native probably because people tell that it is not important, the same way people tell japanese pitch accent is not important aka flat. I think the only way to correct this is by reading aloud properly, and i mean lots of reading, starting from the most beginner level like pronouncing alphabet. It's a tough work, most people won't even bother to, learning all over again, who's up for that?
Adults are often not very good at imitating sounds like children. That's why becoming intimately familiar with the International Phonetic Alphabet is a must for any serious adult learner. Always check IPA transcription in a dictionary, even if you think you know the pronunciation of a particular word. You're going to be surprised quite often.
For example, words like "off" and "of" may look very similar, but they usually sound very different like /ɔf/ and /əv/. If you know the IPA, you can also find good articles about each sound on Wikipedia with comprehensive explanations and language comparison tables. It may look intimidating at first, but you'll get used to it quickly and it will help you improve your accent in any language because it's universal.
And always stick to one dialect/accent until you're good at it. For example, if you try to learn American English, always use American English dictionaries to avoid mixing things up with British English and vice versa.
@ロマン I don't agree with the second one. I've met people who learned english around 20's and be fluent after about 5 years, also the guy said that he started thinking in english, even had a dream in english. So yeah, no..
My mom is a teacher. She has to teach english and swedish. She can have basic conversations in english but she is not as fluent as I am. I tried talking with her about good ways to learn languages but she doesn't listen... she has the traditional teacher approach with little word tests and extensive grammar reading. I beliebe that with that approach you can get on a basic conversation level but you won't ever get fluent that way and it takes a lot more time and energy. I'm now learning german and really so far the best thing I have done in order to learn has been playing minecraft with a 9 years old german girl. And also reading a book. Though with the book my mom always teases me like: "how come you say you are not good in german, yet you read a book?"
It's funny how "iTalki" is crossed out in the thumbnail and I have an iTalki lesson in one hour... lol
make sure you take their advice with a grain of salt ;)
@@babygorl9541 Actually, I never really ask for any advice. It's just conversation practice ^^
Tbh, I don't find any point in using iTalki. I can always speak to native language speakers through Discord and online/co-op games. We talk for hours, sometimes for over 12 hours, while playing a game and having fun. Completely free of charge. That's how I practised my English speaking skills and how I plan to practise my Japanese speaking.
@@PrinceDolos if you dont mind what discord server?
@@MrBlack156 I'm not referring to one particular Discord server. I'm talking any Japanese server relating to any co-op game. Terraria, Minecraft, etc.
Make a google search (in Japanese) looking for a server of a co-op game that you have an interest in playing with natives.
The BEST use of Native speakers (from places like iTalki) is for conversation practice. To learn the language itself, apart from conversation (which is like over 50%), you should learn from people who have learned multiple languages AND it's their native language. So if you want to learn Japanese, take lessons from a Japanese native speaker who also has learned English and/or Spanish and/or whatever language.
Not really. For example, I'm Italian, I've learned German and English and therefore I'm perfectly able to explain those grammars, as I've been studying them for years. However, I haven't touched an Italian grammar book since school. I wouldn't be able to explain WHy we use one verb or the other, or even some article rules and exceptions. I could do that in English or German, but not in my mother language. The only way to teach something is to study it beforehand, even if it's the grammar of your native language.
@@dianas7429 Exactly. I've learned English and French but I still have zero idea how to teach Chinese, which is my native language. Teaching a language to foreigners requires proper training.
That's something I learned hard way while learning German from natives. They have their obsolete ways of teaching and no thought about how foreigners think
Right? I'm trying to learn German too. Man, it's so confusing sometimes. So many words that mean the same but must be used in different contexts. For example, entscheiden, entschließen, wählen, auswählen... Everything can be translated as "to choose" 🤷♀️ I'm married to a German and very often he can't really explain those differences. When it comes to grammar, they also don't know that much from level B2 on.
@@vs9400 I passed the B2 German exam. My best advice is not to think in English much.
Try to figure out for yourself when to use those words.
Ausswählen/aussuchen- Ja die Nuancen.
Let me recommend an app to you- Reverso in context- This app might help you.
Sentences in context. There are some videos on UA-cam explaining the meaning of these four words.
learn them by reading german definitions and not English definitions. Well, Reverso is a good option because you can read sentences in two languages.
I went to school and then I gave up. I decided to study the language on my own.
They don't know how to teach the language well
But it’s germans in general. Not only when teaching languages
@@Theyoutuberpolyglot " _learn them by reading german definitions and not English definitions._ " Very good advice. I've noticed that a lot of people don't realize that there's often no direct translation for many words in different languages. What you see in bilingual dictionaries are often just approximate translations taken out of context. As soon as your vocabulary is good enough to roughly navigate through written text in a foreign language, you should immediately switch to monolingual dictionaries in that language. For German, _Langenscheidt Wörterbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache_ is a good start.
I’ve only ever studied with native speakers who are certified tutors. Most know their language really well and are actually trained to teach. They also have unmatched intuitive knowledge of their language. Sometimes it’s more important to sound natural rather than correct.
From my experience, the best tutors are the ones willing to say when they aren't sure or will look it up. I have a tutor who does just that. I also know he's a language learner who is still trying to master English himself. So I think having a teacher like that helps in that he understands the struggle of language learning.
I personally do the same thing for my Japanese friend who is trying to learn English. I learned long ago I know English but don't usually understand why I say things the way I do. So anytime I am asked a question, I always look up the grammatical reason why and then try to re-explain it to her in a simpler way.
I think it’s funny how much effort we put into sounding native in Japanese when I’ve never heard a Japanese person speak without a noticeable accent.
I think it’s because a lot of people that learn Japanese absolutely love the language and the culture, while many people that learn English do it as a necessity or because it is a globalized language. Less passion= less effort in their accent. Many people that learn English just want to be understood rather than being native level.
"Japanese is flat."
How many times have I heard this from Japanese teachers? Hahaha
Seriously? I saw this myth addressed in Dogen's video the other day and kinda thought he could've been exaggerating in order to draw attention to the importance of accent, which certainly seems to be neglected.
What these teachers meant when they said that? Did they imply Japanese lacks any accent whatsoever, pitch or stress?
i remember when i first realized this was a lie and then got really pissed off at my teacher for telling me that.......
I took a few private lessons and even though I was just starting to learn Japanese, I remember the teacher spending time trying to teach me the difference in the pronunciation between bridge and chopsticks. I had a hard time telling the difference between hashi and hashi. I also remember spending lots of time saying ra ri ru re ro.
@@nomadicmonkey3186 everybody here, my wife used to say this until I convinced her that it's nonsense.
@@nomadicmonkey3186 The truth is a lot more innocent. Explanation of pitch accent is just different in Japanese. For e.g. according to them the "accent" on the word is when the pitch goes from high to low. If you do some wierd illegal stuff like go from high to low to high again to them it sounds like you're deliberately singing out your words or something in stead of naturally saying it in a "flat" manner ( If you've seen dogen's lessens you'll notice for 4 mora words and beyond the longest part of the pitch accent would be the flat part, since the 4 patterns are mostly defined by when is there an upstep and a down step. If you're fluctuating in a wierd manner instead of going high and staying high when you should or going low and staying low , or downstepping to early in the odaka pattern it sounds like you're not being "flat" to them)
I remember when I visited my host family in France, I was asked about how to pronounce "cicada." There are lots of cicadas in France and not any in the state of WA. I never actually heard the word, but I've read it before. So I told him it was pronounced "Ky-cada," but he had the correct pronunciation, "Si-cada."
Now there's someone who thinks that "cicada" is pronounced differently than it is, perhaps even correcting his fellow French friends because a native speaker told him it was pronounced a different way.
Great video, man 👍 I’ve studied languages for years and while language exchange with native speakers has been one of the most useful tools ever in developing my fluency after learning the basics, I can definitely confirm that *most* native speakers do not actually understand the details of their own language and, well, basically everything you said in the video had some truth to it! In fact, I have learned so much about my own native language from talking to so many foreigners, being asked questions I’d never thought about and thinking a lot and/or looking up answers, watching English-teaching videos in order to pass on good ones to friends learning it, etc. We just speak our own language. We don’t intimately “get” it. I don’t find much like this out there. I think a lot of teachers tend to be too optimistic thinking that warnings of negative aspects of learning will demotivate people. I think you gave valuable, honest advice. 👍
I have a best friend from Spain that moved to Norway for 4 years ago and I teach her Norwegian and she teaches me Spanish, it helps us both❤️ I learnt English from when I was 6 till 18 so of course I can already speak it, but my friend knows it was hard learning Norwegian and I know it was hard learning Spanish, and now we are both helping each other and speak relatively well, of course she speaks better Norwegian than I speak Spanish because we live in Norway but I can keep a conversation without problems❤️
Your comment about seeking language advice from native speakers is very inspiring. I think most language learners, including me, tend to believe that native speakers are 'authority' in the language they are good at and there is no way that we can challenge them because we can never be a native like they are. I have been asked questions about my native language and I could not explain well enough because there are so many things come so natural to me and I have never thought of why I spoke or use certain words in certain ways until I met a person asking me to tell him/her why. Since I could not give him/her a satisfactory answer, I kind of 'more understanding' when some teacher told me 'Well, native tend to speak it in this way, no reason' but in fact there is a reason, he just doesn't know.
I just found your UA-cam channel few days ago and after watching one single video, immediately, knew I had to be subscribed! What and AWESOME work you're doing, Matt. I'm a English learner and after 6 months really focused on English I'm feeling lost. I'm full of motivation, however, lack of guidance sort of discourage me and pushes me out of road, feeling like I don't know where to going. Matt, I'll appreciate if you give me some guide I can follow or in which order I should watch your videos and then I'll try to figure out how to apply everything onto English. Thank you for everything you are giving to this community.
I recommend starting with the overview on the site; it functions as a bird-eye's view of all my ideas: massimmersionapproach.com/table-of-contents/stage-0/overview/
@@mattvsjapan I'll give it a try, of course! Thank you, Matt.
This is an amazing video. I've been studying several languages, and have a lingusitics degree, and I've noticed many times that native speaker answer without knowledge of language learning or the grammar of their language, or out of agenda (how things SHOULD be said according to the academy vs how people actually speak).
Thank you for this clarifying, enlightening video
Dude how are you not at atleast 500k subs
Doge Step I know why. Been thinking about telling Matt one day but not sure how to contact him lol
UA-cam is like The Shawshank Redemption: pressure and time.
Making really good videos is like using your rock hammer with more force: yes it works a bit better, but it's still not as effective as just having been around longer and making more videos. Look at Steve Kaufmann - very little effort in his videos; he just spends like 5 minutes making a one minute point, but he has been putting out 2 videos a week for like 10 years haha, and he's got 200K subs. Luca: much better videos (IMO) but far less of the them: 100K subs.
Matt vs Japan: Great videos, a lot of them but only been putting out regular content for 2 years: 17K subs.
If I were to venture a guess, it might be due to the fact that Matt's material is quite high-level and not really geared towards the traditional mass consumption. People are always going to be interested in flashy, shorter videos and much fewer would go for anything that requires a longer attention span to absorb. I devour Matt's every explanation and analogy and think he's great. He articulates my own thoughts so eloquently. I teach English to Thai learners (without any formal teaching qualification whatsoever) and I'm always thinking about the most effective way of teaching them or demonstrating a point. Matt's videos organise my random thoughts into something much more structured and tangible/applicable. I don't wish I'd come across him sooner, because at the point where I am now, I can understand him fully and do not mind sitting through his long videos for they make complete sense to me.
@@daysandwords Great point. Another factor to add is whether the UA-camr has any viral videos reaching millions of views, which could rack up the number of subscribers. An example is Polyglot Stories. She only has 10 videos as of this writing, but she has 240k subs.
@@rxmth9242 I guess you have to mix your videos with something that can go viral. IDK honestly, besides youtube algoritm changes so much.
Key point here: 0:45 He's specifically saying the native speakers that *have not* mastered a second language. I can confirm this because the advice that has helped me a lot is from native speakers that have mastered a 2nd or 3rd language, so they know all the struggles and the process of learning a new language.
This reminds me of when I was teaching English for Berlitz in Japan. Students mostly followed a curriculum and when they hit the halfway point or completed a book, we had to take five minutes to recommend ways to self study for that student based on their individual needs. As a language nerd who had studied languages for almost 20 years on and off but more on, I was totally up for it. But apparently most teachers felt totally unqualified and had no idea what to say. But they’re told that’s not an option they have to just make something up and sound authoritative. A perfect example of when you shouldn’t listen to the native speaker. I’m sure it happens all the time in other language programs too.
That anecdote about the native japanese college teacher was really eye opening!
This video is so meaningful for me considering I also have just finished my first year in univeristy taking "language" classes and assuming that a native speaker is the most "trustworthy" or "valuable" source to learn from. Thank you so much! This is such a mindset switch for me, but it makes so much sense and also gives me a lot of relief.
大賛成です！（英訳をあとで書きます）I will write my opinion both in Japanese and English.
「外国語を習得していないネイティヴ」は，無意識に母語を話しています。
学習法や，なぜそう言うのかなど，分析的な解答は得られません。
ですが状況に応じた自然な表現など，ネイティヴだから分かることもあります。
知りたい内容に応じて，アドバイスを求める相手を選ぶことが必要だと思います。
「ぼく(僕)」には自分を指す場合と，小さな男の子を指す場合があります。
頭高アクセントの僕は，小さな男の子を表すと思います。
たとえば小学１先生ぐらいの男の子は，自分のことを頭高アクセントで僕と言います。
その子に対して「僕，いくつ？」と聞くような場合も，頭高アクセントです。
年齢が高くなるにつれて平板，もしくは尾高になるのではないでしょうか。
I totally agree with you, Matt!
Native speakers who haven't mastered a foreign language speak their own language only unconsciously.
They can't give you analytical answers to questions such as "How can I learn Japanese?" or "Why do you use the expression?".
But they can tell whether what you say sounds natural to them.
So you need to think who you are going to ask according to what you want to know.
I think "Boku" has two different meanings.
One is to refer to a young boy and the other to refer to yourself (male).
If you say "Boku" in the atamadaka accent, you are talking about a small boy.
A first grade boy would call himself "Boku" in the atamadaka accent.
You would call him "Boku" in the atamadake accent when you ask him, "How old are you?"
I think as a boy grows up, he calls himself "Boku" in the odaka (tail-pitched) accent.
Over 10 years of saying boku in the wrong way and no one pointed it out, omg. This is the first time I hear about this. Thank you!
Interesting point and I've got to admit it makes sense. In my experience as a non native English teacher naitives are invaluable in helping students overcome their speaking barrier. There's some kind of magic to them :))) For me that's probably the main reason why it's worth hiring a native English speaker trained in ELT.
Omg Thank you!!! I had to learn the hard way with Chinese. Now, I see why we don't actually learn a language in school because we only learn from a textbook. I'm not fluent yet but I am at an intermediate level. I truly started learning Chinese at 21 so age does not matter.
Finally, someone who knows what he's talking about.
That's exactly what I thought when I first watched one of Matt's videos.
So, just find a native speaker of your target language who has also learned other languages💁♂️
AGREED! I cannot get over how much I learned about how English works, by learning a different language. Learning a second language really increases your understanding of you L1
Hmmm. I don't think the video is specifically talking about language learning in general, but rather the workings of said language that come naturally to native speakers but can't be explained by them. Edit: Okay, so I've just listened to more of the video and it _is_ in fact talking about language learning in general, that said, I do think that needing to work at understand the workings of a language will equip a teacher with more skill to teach that language.
Exactly! They have experience and can pass that on to you.
Or even better: a non-native speaker who has achieved fluency.
That's what I do with french with channels like Innerfrench who is a native speaker and also learned 2 foreign languages.
This is so true, I used to teach English in Taiwan and certain questions I couldn’t answer and had to ask the Taiwanese teacher why the grammar was the way it is, she knew cause she had learned it as an adult, I didn’t cause it’s my native language.
I think there’s a similar problem with getting advice from someone who’s learned a language very easily, because they are talented they could have leaned in any way and still have been successful. I’ve just uploaded a video talking about this also, and how I learned Chinese as a deaf person.
My [Vietnamese] wife asks me questions about English. I can for sure tell her the answer, often answer why, sometimes I can even track the gut feeling to a rule, but often enough I don't why it is the way it is.
Also as a music teacher I can relate to the music analogy. I feel like you can really only teach what you had trouble learning (maybe that's an exaggeration). The problems I had to battle and struggle and fight to overcome I already know the best and quickest way to help my students as I was very deliberate in that process. Something that came easy, it's a matter of looking and seeing what I'm doing and then teaching that. They're definitely different processes.
This was really interesting! I wasn’t sure what kind of things you were going to say to back up your statement because I’ve heard this same statement but not with any reasons behind it. I really agree with you.
Sometimes I think learning from someone who learned the languages really well is better at the beginning and learning from a native is better later on. Depending on their own experience with language learning.
Excellent analysis. I'm glad you mentioned that it's not just the average native speaker who is the problem, but also so-called "professionals" who are monolingual and have no real knowledge about how we acquire languages.
100% true.
People almost react like it's blasphemy to say this. But it's simply true.
Also, not only on italki and HelloTalk and so on, but that's also one of the reason why most Japanese classes you can take freaking suck. The teacher is generally a random Japanese person (mostly a woman) who absolutely doesn't have any deeper understanding of her native tongue.
(Which is in itself totally fine, I also couldn't teach German, my native language - but don't become a 'teacher' then)
Dass man dich hier sieht... Wusste nicht, dass du MIA gemacht hast 😅
@@Radescha Hab ich nicht. :-)
Ich treibe mich auf allen möglichen Channels rum, die irgendwas mit Lernen im Allgemeinen und Sprachen lernen im Speziellen zu tun haben. ^^
Neue Inspirationen sind immer schön.
I dont know how it works in germany but where I'm from in order to teach classes at a reputable institution or a school/uni, you need a degree, specialization, qualification etc.
They dont just wander around town and pick up the first Japanese person they find and go "You wanna make 100 bucks mate?"
@@LeoSkyro Are you sure? From what I've heard, it's not that much different on the other side of the pond.
In the Volkshochschule (I don't think a word for that exists, it's a school for continuing non-credit education of adults in Germany and other countries), literally 9 out of 10 teachers have 0 background except being a native speaker.
And even at my university, while we had two professors, other courses were held by, in all honesty, rather random native speakers. They did have some degree I guess, but either not anything relevant like Japanese as a foreign language, or if they did, it sure as hell didn't show.
@@JapanischErfahren I dont live in the US. And I guess the German education system has really weird standards when it comes to linguistic subjects
I'm so glad I came across your videos early on in my journey of learning Japanese! Before that I was sooooo lost I was all over the place
どうもありがとう
Thinking native speakers are the ultimate authority. This is an example of what I call "common dumb" it's one of those things most people mistakenly assume to be common sense.
Yeah there definitely are some common dumb:
1. Flossing is good for your dental health
2. BMI is a good measure of metabolic health
3. A calorie is a calorie (no matter if it comes from fat, protein, comeplex carbs, or simple carbs; given that you get fewer calories than calories you use,
you must lose fat.)
I know I went on a tangent, but I frustrates me to no end that so many people believe in unfounded beliefs or even think to question the logic.
I have a rebuttal of your rebuttal of the rebuttal: athletes can improved drastically working with biomedical engineers (who themselves are rarely even elite amateur athletes) on aspects of their sports that don't require much athleticism (i.e. free throws, breathing, getting up after knocked down). This is why we should be able to rely on monolingual researchers who do really interesting research on language acquisition and how to apply that information to a classroom.
But I get it. You're saying, the whole field in filled with people who have neither experience nor evidence and since evidence is harder to come by, let's bet on the people with experience. I think the bigger problem might be that language teachers are trained in 'presenting information in a classroom-setting' rather than language acquisition. Their certificates, master's, and Ph.Ds do give them a false sense of authority which is a disease.
I tried native speakers twice and then went "Alright, let's try a different approach".
Now my tutor is an Ukranian. No regrets.
I've been learning Spanish for about 20 years and my GF is a native speaker of both English and Spanish. I can explain Spanish grammar far better than she can because I had to learn it. She is infinitely better than me at speaking and listening to the language and is pretty much 100% fluent. She just doesn't know WHY things are the way they are. So yes, your video is right.
Jfc I’m so glad someone said this lmaoo. All I had to do was think about native English speakers and how many of them don’t even know English that well. 😂 unless they also learned a different language or a linguist I realized they rarely think about their language or why they say what they do. A lot of esoteric grammar is also just intuitive if they’re a native speaker, you can’t expect them to explain a lot of stuff that makes sense.
The flat thing has also really annoyed me, because I grew up speaking Vietnamese so i can hear pitches in speech VERY easily. I never heard Japanese as flat in tone. Very even but not flat. I think what they *mean* is that they don’t usually stress syllables. Either they don’t recognize there is a difference between the pitch/strength or they dont realize that pitch is a part of the definition of evenness to English speakers.
Actually I had a very interesting experience with this. Spanish is my native language (and as you can see I'm learning English), and in Tiktok there is this American guy that had to learn spanish and makes some funny videos about it. One of these videos is about how the word "agua" (water, in spanish), is "feminine" and in spanish you need to know this because the article may change depending of the "sex" of the word, and I say "may", because with "agua" you use the article "El" that is supposed to be use with "male" nouns even though "agua" is "feminine". As you might guess, this has to be with a rule that I know since I study languages, but most native speakers don't. In comments everyone was confused, and it surprised me that when I wrote the explanation about this rule, most of them not only didn't believed me, but some even said "i was wrong" and tried to debate about it. I can totally see this hapening in a classroom.
While I generally agree with what you're saying, I've been impressed how many Japanese natives are able to explain what words mean (and I'm not talking about explaining simple words that you can show an object for or describe materialistically), much better than most people would be able to in my own country about my native language, myself included. I guess that has to do with how they learn/are taught 国語 (at least the older generations, I don't know if that's true for younger generations).
Fair point. I think the baseline of the video wasn't to say that Japanese are particulary bad at analysing their own language. Japanese language was just an example chosen because this is his personal experience.
I also think that, when compared with other countries or languages, Japanese have in average a very decent level of understanding of their national language. As you said.
14:50 It's not like a polyglot would be able to explain that either, adjectival order is a very obscure part of English grammar that even most comprehensive English grammars wouldn't contain. Instead, you would have to look at linguistics research papers to find information about it.
Furthermore, isn't your whole strategy not to focus too much on grammar rules. Like neither first or language speakers would probably know the ins and outs of case, tense, aspect, and mood. So the best way to figure out these types of things would just be exposure/input just like you, Steve Kaufmann, Steven Krashen, etc. all say.So probably not the best example for the answer.
I thought the same thing. Moreover, we have the internet. You can actually look up these grammar questions and compare what the authorities say. Native speakers are definitely not authorities on what is correct or not. English speakers always say things like "Do you want to go with my friend and I to dinner?" They think using "I" sounds correct. "With I" is ridiculously incorrect, but when there are words in between, native speakers often suddenly no longer can discern that it's incorrect. Since I speak other languages, I'm hyper-aware of these things. Another example is how people normally say "haven't drank, haven't ran, haven't sang" instead of using the past participle "haven't drunk, haven't run, haven't sung."
@@corynicolas3175 Part of sounding native is making the kinds of mistakes native speakers do (and none of the mistakes native speakers don't do). But if you want to sound professional, then making no mistakes is best. It just depends.
@@HoratioAccel Yes. This is something I've been fascinating with for decades. There are typical native mistakes and non-native mistakes. There are mistakes you would rarely or never hear a native speaker make and there are also mistakes that many or the majority of native speakers make.
For example, in Spanish, make non-native speakers who are not fluent say "me llamo es" which you would never heard a native-speaker say. However, you hear native speakers say "traducí" and "más mejor" instead of "traduje" and "mejor." You constantly hear natives say "neva" instead of "nieva."
A non-native error in Spanish may be "gracias por ayudándome" instead of "gracias por ayudarme" or "voy a ir con tú" instead of "voy a ir contigo."
Examples of these typical native and non-native errors in English are:
Can you helping me (non-native)?
Where did you went (non-native)?
He no is here (non-native).
He don't can read English (non-native).
Have you ever sang that song (native error)?
Have you ever took Spanish (native error).
He don't work (native error).
He's helping my friend and I with that. (native error).
The dog was ran over (native error).
In fact, thanks for reminding me about this phenomenon. I think I'm going to make a video about it on my channel. It's a topic I was planning on covering for a long time.
Agreed. As a native English speaker, I've had so many "good questions" from L2 learners of English. It's made me more observant of English and why I say what I say the way I say it for sure. Also, I've had many questions about other languages that couldn't quite be answered with ease if at all. Most of my foreign language acquisition has been self-taught, and it has only gotten better by having native speakers around me to strengthen my skills.
後ろのポスターがかっこよすぎるのと、どんな本を読んでいらっしゃるのか気になって話に集中できない笑
日本語教師で英語学習者です。マットさんのおっしゃる通りで、日本語教師でも学習者へのアドバイスは簡単ではないと思います。
Absolutely on point. Teaching is a skill. I had a guitar teacher earlier in life and a French teacher later in life and I didn’t gel with them and (incorrectly) concluded that I was just incapable of learning either of the things they were masters of. When I realized that they were “native“ to their areas of expertise but not “native” to teaching, I ceased believing I was “dumb.”
My favourite German teacher is from Iran. She obviously has mastered German but also my native language (English). She has an amazing ability to articulate concepts in the German language. I 100% agree that native speakers generally can't tell you why things are the way they are.
There is also sometimes a problem with "grammar nerds" which is that they can tend to focus too much on specific details of the language you are learning because it's interesting to them. Grammar nerd advice tends to put off beginner first-time language learners by swamping them with information while simultaneously not having any idea about how a learner should focus their effort, essentially giving too much of the wrong information at the wrong time.
Now that im on my asian language journey, i can say a lot of mandarin native speakers can't really help me, so i tend to go to non natives who was in my position. I think theres a give and take, for me having conversations with native speakers is better than trying to go the typical learning way
That's my problem as a German native speaker.
I can actually explain English grammar way easier than German grammar.
I'm also a German native speaker and I can't explain the grammar in neither language xD
more easily*
But I'm a native English speaker who has never learned a second language, so take that correction with a grain of salt. ;-)
Superman's billiger Klon But seriously, lots of Americans also use adjectives when they should be using adverbs. I guess people get sloppy when they're using the language they're used to since they don't have to think about it as much.
@@Primalxbeast That's the problem. I don't want to sound noble or anything, but when I started to just talk with Americans online, I started to adopt the mistakes they make in their own language.
But you are actually right, since I wanted to describe a verb, I had to use the adverb.
Or I could have written: Explaining English grammar is easier for me than...
I can explain german better than italian... hehe (my native is italian)
Honestly I'm Russian and whenever my foreign friend who studies Russian asks me "so how does this work" I'm like mate. Idk. I just know it and speak it lmao I dont know shit about my own language's grammar(Russian grammar is very complex tho often if a sentence is too long I confuse cases and conjunctions of words haha)
I speak Slovene, which is a Slavic language, just like Russian. We too have a lot of tenses and the word changes form depending on how you want to use it. We also have genders for everything (even it). Explaining is not that hard, but actually getting what I'm trying to explain is hard.
I think people have the top athlete/coach point backwards. Mediocre athletes make good coaches because they had to work hard at it. They had to implement skills and strategies that just came naturally to top athletes. So in this analogy, the mediocre athlete is like the person who has learned a second language and the top athlete is like the native speaker. You go to each one for different reasons which is to your point that native speakers can be good for certain advice but bad for other advice.
I hope that all made sense. Great videos.
The best teachers are teachers! Not random people. No matter if native or not.
I remember Joey (The Anime Man) talking about how hard it is to handle all the, "What's the best way to learn Japanese?" or "How do I learn Japanese?" from viewers. He was raised bilingual.
Asking a native speaker how to speak their language is like asking a bird how to fly a plane. The way they reached fluency, or flight in this case and the way you are going to achieve flight are so radically different that there are myriad pitfalls when asking for advice.
Matt is a skilled guy..He has been teaching many people how to tackle language learning for years..and he has been doing it intelligently and honestly
A lot of ESL teaching methodology resonates with YOUR theory, Matt.
ESL teaching community even created super helpful monolingual dictionaries like the Longman dictionary for learners of English.
Something you yourself want to replicate for learning Japanese.
im not even learning japanese but youre content is some of the best ive found on youtube, keep up the great work!
I don't know about America, but from my experience in the UK, the TEFL courses are based off of Developmental and linguistic psychology, which in the large part follows the advice you give and the Eijatt style of learning. Japan in general is just really far behind, and there is a base of teachers that learned a long time ago and don't know the new methods. Further, most people taking a TEFL course and not linguists or developmental psychologists, so they don't really properly comprehend the stuff they are learning.
Another rebuttal I would make is that there are many people that misattribute how they learn a language. Conversely native speakers are aware of school system's teaching of their native language. Children with no schooling would speak very differently to someone with education, and even among the different levels of education there are different styles of talking. As long as this is understood, and the student takes control of the learning process, a native speaker can work as an acceptable teacher
It's incredible that I have come to this conclusion a while ago. I tend to spend most of my time thinking things over and over, and it was one of those things that made question native speakers abilities to understand what learning a new language actually feels like.
Good video, again... :)
I think you are right about the sports coach analogy. True there are some great sports coaches (martial arts instructors, etc.) that may not be the most talented athletes. However there are other key differences: (1) coaching methodology tends to follow what has produced results in the past and (2) even coaches who are not the most talented athletes have 'made the journey'. They know what it's like to train themselves. A professional ice hockey coach, for example, probably hasn't taken a class at university telling him 'this is how players get better' and then walks into his job never having played hockey before or never having experienced training himself.
When I began to learn Spanish, I took classes. The head teacher was a native Spaniard and she had tought the Indian teachers how to teach Spanish.
My Indian teachers indeed tought some really important concepts.
I agree with the title 1000%. My wife is Japanese native, English fluent. She doesn't even correct me when I speak incorrect Japanese to her. She just says "so cute", "its always correct when you say it". Also when I try to practice conversation with her she'll use grammar + vocab way out of my current level (N3) and explaining things pretty poorly. Shes still helpful but I learned way more on my own than from her.
ちょっとバカにされていますね
To add to your adjective order argument. There's even more that natives do here unconsciously just because in English 'i + a/o' sound is preferred to 'a/o + i' (like tick tock not tock tick). For example 'good little knife' fits the regular order rule but 'big bad wolf' doesn't. So as always you're spot on with your theories.
I can’t tell people why something doesn’t sound right and I’m very fluent in English as it is my Native language.
Of course I’d think it’s the other way around with Japanese as well.
I have been imagining trying to explain to someone why we use the word "was" in the sentence, "I wish I was an astronaut." It's not talking about the past. So why is it "was"? Something to do with the subjunctive mood, maybe? But I would not be able to explain it coherently.
Non-STEM college courses always feel like a fraud. You can almost always find a youtube channel more informative than your college professors. It’s really unfortunate considering the exorbitant cost of college.
I tell my guy friends the same thing about dating advice. Don't ask women how to be more successful at dating women. Ask men who are successful at dating women. You wouldn't ask a fish how to catch a fish, they would tell you to just wait around and suddenly one day you're caught.
Funnily enough, I once inquired a female friend about dating and her advice was "don't do anything, just wait and you'll find someone one day."
@@QCLagstone That's literally what women have to do to find a guy. She meant no harm, it's only that it does not apply to men.
Hi, Matt-san
I've just started to be a tutor on italki and I thought 'oh no am I not supporting students at all ?' when I found this video though Dôgen-san's channel this morning.
But, I'm so relieved, I am okay enough to be a tutor 😊 according to this( I mean, my skill is to be sharpen of course! )
Thank you for making this video :))
Taking like a native is different than talking like a language textbook. It takes a lot of immersion to emulate native talking. We are not even addressing the thorny issue of accent.
I’m native English and your pronunciation of forte sounded good to me…
I live in an area with both native english and spanish speakers. A significant number of people here learn a mix of both (Spanglish) as young children, and these are the same people who end up teaching spanish classes in the schools.
You just explained to Japan how much money they’re wasting on the JET program.
Except that the primary purpose of the JET Program isn't for ALTs to teach English grammar rules or to give Japanese people advice on how to learn English. They are there so that Japanese students can have experiences interacting with foreigners and using English to communicate with a native speaker, to hear natural pronunciation, to learn about foreign culture, to help them with their confidence, to help motivate them to be more interested in English and foreign countries and maybe above all, to build stronger connections between Japan and foreign countries through personal relationships (soft power) etc. if you want to talk about wasting money with regard to English education, look at the entire system of English education in Japan, most of the Japanese English teachers are not very good at English and the way that Japanese people learn English in schools in general is pretty terrible. Their English education system is one of the worst in the world, basically the total opposite of MIA.
moyga The bitter ex-ALT I see
@@anewhope538 Did you mean to reply to me or to the original poster? Bitter about what? I'm not sure why you think I am bitter, or what you think I am bitter about. Also not an ex-ALT. Regardless, ad hominem.
Shhhh.... >_>
@@anewhope538 what? lol he's right and nothing about his post seemed bitter just realistic. it's just for cultural exchange and giving japanese kids a chance to hear real english.
I learnt English from a native person(British) and I was able to speak in about 7 months so I generally think that it depends on people.
*0:00**-Introduction*
On the surface, it might seem like native speakers are the ultimate authority on a given language, and because of this, a lot of language learners will seek out native speaker teachers in order to help them learn their target language. Now although it is true that native speakers can be extremely valuable within the greater process of mastering a foreign language, it's also true that a lot of times, native speakers give out quite a bit of bad language learning advice, so in this video, I'm gonna be talking about why you shouldn't listen to native speakers' language learning advice, why native speakers are not necessarily true authorities on their language, and what mindset you should approach native speaker tutors with in order to get the most bang for your buck.
Now before I jump in, I just want to clarify that when I say "native speaker", I'm specifically referring to native speakers who have not mastered a foreign language, so for example, if I'm trying to learn Japanese, then I'm talking about Japanese people who were born and raised in Japan and haven't fully mastered another foreign language like English, because if we're talking about someone who has mastered a foreign language, then not only are they a native speaker of a given language, but they're also a successful language learner, and this is gonna be a distinction that I go into later on in the video, and I also just want to clarify that when I say "native speaker", I'm talking about both professionally trained teachers, for example, if you take a college class, there might be a native speaker who has actually been educated in teaching that language as a foreign language, but I'm also talking about everyday people, for example, maybe you just have some friends who speak the language.
*1:35**-Language learning advice vs. language-specific information*
So for the sake of this video, I'm gonna be making a distinction between language learning advice and information related to specific languages, so when I say "language learning advice", I'm talking about the overall methodology with which you approach the acquisition of a foreign language, so this would be things like "Is it better to focus on listening ability or speaking ability?" or "If I want to improve my speaking ability, how should I spend my time in order to do that; should I be speaking to myself in the mirror; should I be recording videos of myself; should I be talking to people on the street; how should I go about learning vocabulary; should I use a frequency list; should I use Anki?", etc, so these are things related to "How do you actually go about acquiring a foreign language in the big picture?", and then on the other hand, we have information about specific languages, so I'm talking about things like "What does a given specific word mean; what does a specific grammar structure mean; is a given sentence grammatical or not; how is a given word pronounced?", so these are kind of just individual factoids about a given specific language that can be considered correct or incorrect, so basically, what I gonna be arguing in this video is that when it comes to language learning advice, you really don't want to pay attention to anything that native speakers say. On the other hand, when it comes to specific information about a language, it can be very useful to ask a native speaker, but you have to take everything they say with a kind of grain of salt and it's important to not just believe everything they say wholesale because sometimes, native speakers can be a little bit misguided in certain areas.
I relate to your uni/college story. I did Spanish at uni (just for one semester, I wanted a language elective and it was the only one they offered). I love languages and spent easily 6hrs a day either directly learning or immersing. I also speak French which helped. I am dyslexic and I was entitled to extra support but my teacher literally accused me of not being dyslexic because I was (not surprisingly) doing better than everyone else in my class (except for a girl whose mother was Equadorian), who were probably only doing Spanish for the 2hrs a week that we had class. She had no conception of the work that I put in and the fact that this was not my first additional language, just acted like my 2x diagnoses (I had to get another one when moving countries) were not true and refused to allow me extra time on assessment, completely ignoring all the times I would randomly mix up words and letters- not forgetting M/F but literally just forgetting letters or putting them in the wrong place, and would never be able to finish extended written response in the given time. Her English was terrible which made it harder to explain tbh. Other students said it was hard to communicate with her as well. Glad I only had one semester with her.
I can definitely attest to this. I teach English as a foreign language, which I started really learning when I was 15, and I feel quite confident in my teaching abilities. On the other hand, I've had the experience of teaching my own native language, Portuguese, to foreigners, and I basically sucked. (Take into account that I have a college degree in both languages.)
Man, this is the second video I saw of your channel. I love your tips!
I remember a lot of tips from my english teacher which were really bad, even though she learnt the language. It's probably a "chain" of bad advices that started from their teacher, or even before, idk. Anyway, I'm starting to learn french and your videos are really helpful. I know my English is not good enough, but I've never really enjoyed to learn it, although it's useful (and your videos are an actual proof of it).
Hey Matt - Where is that interview with the American living in Japan as a salaryman? That was one of the most interesting interviews I've ever seen.
It had to be removed due to him getting blackmailed by his previous employer
Ok, so first of all, and this is coming from my perspective as a multiple-language learner and native language teacher myself (Spanish), I think this whole idea about natives (and here I'm talking about native trained teachers) not being good teachers is simply misleading. There are great non-native teachers, and there great native teachers as well, one does not exclude the other. Second of all, there are as many types of students as there are types of teachers, so the debate about whether we are able to learn a second or third language in the same way we did our first one, would have to take into account many, many different variables, ultimately this comes down to what your experience has been regarding language learning, and yes, there are many lousy teachers all around the world, and yes, I do think it comes as an asset to me, to have mastered other languages when teaching my native language. That being said, I also know great teachers who've never mastered a second language, and, depending on the type of student you are, I'm sure they could fit your needs I do agree that for the most part, students (mostly those who attend group lessons) tend to be very passive in their approach to languages, they just expect information to be fed to them and so this process does, very much indeed, differ from the far more natural process of learning acquisition as a child. Now, once you feel comfortable with your own learning process and you've managed to turn it into a much more active thing, it's so much easier to rely on, in fact, not only trained language native teachers (which to be is imperative, intonation and accent-wise) but also just native speakers, because this time you're not expecting everything to be handed out to you, it's you picking up the pieces, putting the puzzle together, making assumptions, experimenting, listening closely, etc. That to me, is the beauty of language learning, and it's, not only the most satisfying way of doing it, but also, the most effective, that is of course, for me.
agreed. we live our whole lives being immersed in our native language. we just can't help but learn simply through experience. language learning is a skill and requires specific info that lets lets you learn faster and more explicitly.
I'd actually go even further and look for a native speaker who's already managed to learn a third or fourth foreign language in their adult life. L2 is often acquired through years of exposure that begins in childhood. Consequently, millions of non-native English speakers have absolutely no idea how to learn a foreign language because they learned it from practice while being forced to attend a class at school, playing games, watching Hollywood movies and interacting online. Sure, their results may vary greatly because of talent, intelligence or dedication but still their learning path may remain unknown.
I learned the most about acquiring foreign languages when I decided to learn Italian (my 4th foreign language) at home without classes because I was completely on my own and had to self motivate and find ways to move forward. Made lots of errors on the way and wasted tens of hours but learned a lot about the process and applied it to the next foreign language with ease.
Great content Matt!