Learn how to achieve conversational fluency in any language by focusing on the right goals and efficient methods, not just app progress.
Key Takeaways
- Progress in language learning should be measured by speaking and listening ability, not app streaks or unit completion.
- Fluency means being able to communicate naturally with people you care about or in real-life contexts.
- Efficient, systematized learning methods can drastically reduce the time needed to reach conversational fluency.
- Traditional language learning tools often fail because they focus on the wrong goals.
- Understanding what study time counts and how to apply it is critical to success.
What the video covers
- Many language learners measure progress by the wrong metrics like streaks or units completed, which don't guarantee speaking ability.
- The speaker, Spencer, shares his personal journey learning Mandarin in 182 days to conversational fluency.
- Traditional methods like tutors and textbooks often fail because they don't focus on real conversational skills.
- Fluency is defined by the ability to connect and communicate with loved ones or in real-life situations, not by certifications or app levels.
- The video introduces a multi-part series aimed at teaching efficient, goal-oriented language learning strategies.
- Spencer emphasizes the importance of measuring the right indicators that predict actual conversational ability.
- He explains why many learners feel stuck despite years of study and how to break through that plateau.
- The course focuses on speaking and listening skills as the core of language fluency.
- Viewers are encouraged to understand what kind of study time truly counts toward fluency.
- The video also addresses common frustrations and misconceptions about language learning.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction: Rethinking Language Learning Success
- 06:07Why Traditional Metrics Like Units and Streaks Fail
- 11:48Personal Story: Learning Mandarin in 182 Days
- 17:33Common Learner Frustrations and Misconceptions
- 23:23Defining Fluency and What Really Matters
- 28:53What Study Time Actually Counts Toward Fluency
- 34:35How to Measure Progress That Predicts Real Conversations
- 39:05Next Steps: Applying the Fluency Formula Method
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
If you think you're bad at learning languages, you are absolutely wrong about that. You've actually been winning this whole time, but you've just been winning at a game that really wasn't meant to get you actually speaking the language that you're looking to speak.
Speaker A
And what we're going to break down now is all of the things that you need to understand in order to actually get to the goal that you were originally aiming at. So, with that said, let's jump right in. I'm so excited to have you here.
Speaker A
Let's get going. Pay attention. Stick with me. Let's do this. So, you weren't bad at languages. You were just on the wrong scoreboard. You were measuring the wrong thing. And today we're going to aim you at the right thing. So you were
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winning, like I said, maybe 300 days. Maybe you got to unit 14 of whatever it is that you've been studying or whatever, right? Could be Duolingo, some other app, whatever. You got there, but then your father asked one question
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and none of it was there. I'm going to assume that you want to learn a language for someone that you love, someone that you care about, or maybe you're just interested in learning languages personally, and you had someone speak to
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you in the language that you're supposed to know by now, and you absolutely froze. Everything that you thought and hoped was going to be there wasn't there when you needed it. So, real quick, just so you understand a bit of a background
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on who's even talking to you right now if you're new to the channel. So, my name is Spencer. I basically started learning a language when I was young. I went to a French immersion school as a kid. Then I got interested later on, uh,
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in Japanese and so I started studying Japanese using basically strict immersion. Um, but that wasn't going that fast for me. But thankfully, uh, my main job, uh, is actually I'm a chief operating officer of a mid 8-figure e-commerce
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company. And so efficiency literally is my job. That's what I get paid to do is find systems and make them more efficient. Took everything I learned there and applied it to Mandarin. Now, what you're going to see here is after
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about 182 days, the first time that I ever spoke Mandarin to my then girlfriend, now wife's family. I'm going to play this for you so that you can see what their reaction was to my Mandarin.
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Again, they had never heard me speak before this time. We were sitting at a dinner table and then all of a sudden, I just kind of blurted out Mandarin in the middle of a conversation. Okay, this is after just 182 days of studying.
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What [laughter] the hell? [laughter] [laughter] As you can see. Pretty awesome. Um, and that's what happened again within about a six-month period. And then after that, I got a little bit better at Chinese and I ended up meeting, uh, not meeting but
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ended up asking for my, uh, girl and girlfriend's, um, hand in marriage from her parents in fluent Mandarin. Of course, since that point, um, we ended up having a son. This is a few months back.
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Um, his name is Pierce. He's the best thing that's ever happened. Um, then I kept getting a little bit better at Chinese and I ended up going viral on Chinese social media for how good my Chinese was. I was actually, this video
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was actually by a gentleman who we were speaking Chinese. Um, he's from an area in China called Xinjiang. So, very, very cool. Um, we were talking about different Chinese things. I didn't realize he was recording the video. He
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ended up posting it. It went wild. Um, it now has tens of millions at this point on when I'm showing it to you. It has, this is one of the platforms, has, uh, about four and a half
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million views but now has tens of millions of views, um, millions of likes and that was all because of the level of Chinese I was speaking. Um, and then since then I help people regularly learn languages, especially the ones that their
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loved ones speak so that they can look or they could learn how to use those languages with the loved ones that they want to spend more time with and get to know better. I'm basically the guy that people come to if they want to learn a
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language for someone they care about. Um, specifically if you care about speaking and listening. Um, and I want to let you know that this is going to be one part of a multi-piece series that I'm going to walk you through all the different
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elements that's going to be able to get you to where you need to go in terms of learning a language to spoken conversational fluency. So, that's who I am. Now, let's get back to the exact stuff that you care about the most. So,
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here's a sentence that I hear about, I hear from my students more often than ever or people in the comments on my various platforms, especially Instagram and YouTube. Here's what I hear all the time. So, if you're in a similar boat,
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you're in good company here. I've studied for years and I'm stuck at the same level. They feel like they're not making any progress despite spending all this time. Why is this? Well, I get this all the time. And people say things
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like, "Three years in, I'm watching a video on how to learn a language from zero." Right? Because they're realizing that these things like, you know, I'm not going to mention any. Okay, I am Duolingo and a couple other ones, right?
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They seem cool at the beginning because they feel like you're making a lot of progress, but again, you're measuring the wrong scoreboard, the complete wrong thing. And so, again, this is a 300 days in a you're on unit 14, um, you know, AB
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plus, whatever. You're, you have all these credentials, but it's not measuring the thing you care about, connecting with the people you love or just learning a language because you want to be able to speak it in the country, right? You want to be able to
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go to, let's say, Japan, and you want to be able to just be dropped there, not need ChatGPT, not need Google Translate, and just speak the language.
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And then your partner, basically, there's one question at your partner's parents' table, right? You're sitting at dinner. This is what's happened to me in the past. You're sitting there and you don't understand them. You're like, "Okay, I, you know, don't understand
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anything they're saying, but I've put in all this time or effort in researching methods, even applying methods, and it's not working." Um, or it could be a friend's table, right? I also do want to mention this. It could be a city, you
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move to a friend's table, any conversation where you that you wanted to have that you weren't able to have because you were looking at the wrong thing and you didn't know, and again, it's not your fault, but you didn't know
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what to measure in order to ask, like in order to really calculate when you'll be able to speak a language or what that even means to be able to speak a language. What even is fluency? So here's what we're going to work through
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today, okay? And so I want you to stick with me because all these things are going to unlock the answers to these things are going to unlock as we move forward. So the first thing is why didn't the responsible things work,
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right? Like a tutor or a textbook. Um, what were they actually measuring this whole time? What number actually predicts a conversation when you're actually, you know, going to have some better kind of idea as to where you're going to get to where you want to go? Um,
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and where does that leave you? And then finally, the board that nobody showed you. Okay, so, um, start with what we were counting. So, basically everything that you were told to count, here's the stuff that you've probably been told to count
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by everything you've ever tried in the past. Okay? Streaks, right? Saying, "Oh, stick here for, you know, 100-day streak or 30-day streak or what have you," right? Units, uh, levels like A2, B1.
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This is something that I always talk about if you've seen any of my other videos. I don't love them because I feel like nobody cares. Like, it's only cool when you're comparing to other people or if you're trying to work for
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the government.
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interested, but that doesn't change your level in the language. It just kind of puts it on some rubric that honestly again fewer people than more care about.
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Like what I'm trying to say is not many people are that interested in that. Most people care about can I speak with my loved ones or can I not? Can I go to the country and survive or can I not? Um,
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next is grades and then 15 minutes a day. um you know basically just hey show up for 15 minutes a day do these puzzles on your phone and you know Bob's your uncle now you're fluent like obviously it doesn't work that way um like I've
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said before I've shared this in the past I've had students inside of my communities um who have done 2,000 days in certain programs um most notably Dolingo and still not felt like they want like where they wanted to be. um or
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these programs that will have you repeating after a native speaker, repeating, repeating. Learn a thousand sentences and repeat them. That doesn't help you with the whole other side of the equation, which is people are going to speak to you. It's not just about
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learning a thousand sentences or a thousand words and then all of a sudden you know everything. Of course, there's still things that you need to fit in because it doesn't account for the things that are coming back at you.
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Okay, so you won every single one of these. You did great. You kept the streak, the units, the grades, all of it. But it didn't get you to where you were going. And here's who decides kind of let's talk about who decides what
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counts. Well, nobody built these to make you fluent. It doesn't make sense for a subscription app, right? Something that's saying, "Hey, stay subscribed." Doesn't make sense to get you fluent really quickly from a business perspective. Why would it, right?
Speaker A
So, neither dial has a setting for you at the table. Let's be clear. Here's what we're aiming for with this series that you're going to walk through and and work through is we want to get you at the table speaking the language where
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English is no longer required, okay? Where you can speak Mandarin or Portuguese or Korean or Italian, whatever it is, without English and nothing was trying to get you to that point, which is the point that this series cares most about. Okay, so an app
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wins when you open it tomorrow, clearly, right? And a class wins when you pass on Friday, when you get this, you know, big thing that you can frame in mahogany on your wall that says, "I passed the thing." Right? And the government does
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care about it, right? Of course, if you need it for that purpose, then, you know, maybe watch a different series.
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Um, but the point is is you care about being at the table, speaking with a loved one, and getting to know them completely, right? The other person who might speak another language, you get to know, same, this is what happened with
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my wife, right? Like I got to know that side of her that I would not have known if I didn't spend the time to actually acquire the language. And that's what most people care about. Again, I'll say I'll say this over and over. Um because
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again, it's also important that I'm speaking to the right person. I want to make sure that you're someone who's here for these goals because this series is the one that will help you. If you're here for an A2 certification or
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something like that, this is not the thing. So, both were built, but neither was built for your goals. And that's what the series is designed to change.
Speaker A
So, um they did work, but they just didn't measure the thing you cared about. So, what were they actually measuring this whole time? Right? We kind of just talked about that. It was the wrong scoreboard. It's the wrong
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thing. this isn't what you care about. So, I was the model student for this, okay? I did French immersion school and I did nine years of it. And you know, again, when I was a child, I went to
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this school and so I know what it's like to do intensive stuff that's aimed at passing tests and getting grades, right?
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It had a lot of good elements, but it had some that were a waste of time if my goal was to speak with people that I loved. Um, and then, you know, I went to Japan and that was awesome. I spent some
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time there, not not too long, but I was there and I realized, hey, all of the stuff that I had drilled wasn't really there for me. Even though I did a pretty strict comprehensible input sort of protocol, there were other things that
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were required that could have helped me. Of course, I think comprehensible input is fantastic. I say it all the time, but there's things you need to add to make it go a little faster to be completely honest with you. Um, and so look, every
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score was good on both sides of things, right? The super tavy side and the comprehensible input side a bunch of time, but the speaking was just okay.
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Hey, I mean I was good at both, I think, but it wasn't where I would have liked to be, and it's not especially not where I could have been if I spent more time doing the methods that you're going to
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learn throughout this series. So, um, here's the two things, um, two different things in your head. Study builds one of them. And when I say study, I'm talking textbooks and drills and stuff like that. And speaking needs the other thing. So, knowing about it,
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right? When you know about the grammar rules, like like I say here, right? Rules and tables, word lists, you can just recite, translate, then answer everything over here on this side.
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This is knowing about a language. This is basically the idea that, and I've said it before, this is basically the idea that if you want to learn how to ride a bike or shoot a basketball or doing do something physical, learning
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the rules can help to a degree, but they're not going to get you to actually build the skill, right? So, if you want to learn how to ride a bike, you could read a full textbook about physics. And
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somewhere in this book, of course, is going to be the laws of physics that also describe how to ride a bike. Is that going to get you on the bike and get you from A to B? No. It might help
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in certain ways later on, right? If you learn about, you know, gravity and stuff like that, it might help you maybe when you're more advanced, but early on, you're not doing the things that are going to get you the results that you're
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there for initially. So, actually running it, basically understanding it speed, answering without translation, and catching the joke in time. These things aren't scorable the same way as a lot of these apps and services will try and make them out to be. And this is the
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stuff once again that we care about. we hate, at least I hated, I don't know if you can resonate with me, but I hated being at a table and again I was learning Mandarin in secret, right? As you saw from that video earlier on, what
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I hated was when I was putting in time, it would be so so frustrating to hear them speak to each other and I wouldn't quite know what was being said. Maybe I'd catch a thing or two as I was
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progressing, but I'd be like, "Man, I wish I could be part of this situation." Um, and actually like belong to the situation. And that's the motivation to do it the whole time and why I did it in secret and why I built a system that did
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it so fast was for those reasons. But again, you were just looking at the wrong scoreboard with all of these things that you've been trying and these methods that aim at this like rigid sort of like uh test score, let's say. Um but
Speaker A
yeah, study builds the left one and only the right one talks. That's one of the big problems is this is what most systems comp are comprised of and this is the thing that actually counts. So one scoreboard, it tracks the wrong
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side. So what were they actually measuring? It was activity, not fluency. It was how much were you doing that system, not how much closer were you getting to the goal of belonging at the table, knowing the loved one, etc. Okay, so um next let's
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go on to what number predicts a conversation. Hours of language you mostly understand. If there's one big thing you should walk away from this first video in the series with is that that is going to be one of the biggest
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predictors. Hours of the language that you mostly understand. And we're going to break down how to do that. So understood hours and the table, one number, every language, every learner. I want to be very clear here. This is the same system
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for every language. I get people in the comments and on my Instagram asking me all the time, does this work for Italian? Does this work for Spanish?
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Does it work for Arabic, etc.? Yes, every single language. The one language that I would say might be a bit of a challenge is like code. Like I've had some people ask me that, can I do this with code? Honestly, I have no
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experience in that domain. So, I couldn't tell you. It might in some way, but unfortunately, I'm not I'm not the guy for code anyway. At least not yet.
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Maybe one day. So, again, not studied, understood. That's the whole board. We're not we're not doing these drills that require us to answer certain, you know, pre-es pre-esigned um rubrics that we're going to get to eventually tell us
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whether or not we belong in a government job or something like that. This is going to be hours of the language understood. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that all of the language itself is being understood, but what it does mean is that the messages
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that are coming to you alongside the language are being understood. We're going to break this all down. Okay, so this is why this number stays invisible for you is nobody can sell you a subscription to it. Honestly, it's it's
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not the most lucrative business model to say, "Hey, you know what? Um, there's a certain point where you don't need the service anymore." You know, it's not the most lucrative business model. Um, because subscription is king in a lot of
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ways. this recurring revenue or what have you. Um, and frankly, it's it's not easy to sell. So, um, there's no real badge for it. There's no real level.
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There's no certificate. What there is is this feeling of can I communicate with my partner? Um, and once you get there, it's done, right? Once you get there, it's done. I mean, of course, you know, don't take me out of context here. You
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will always be able to progress in the language. There will always be the next level. Um, but if your goal is belonging at the table and getting to a point where you understand the language where it can now carry itself, spending more
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time doing things that you enjoy can now carry itself, that's the point where the subscription ends, right? So, um, nothing you own has ever reported it.
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Nothing that you've owned before has ever reported this number or helped you with this number. And that's been the biggest problem with a lot of these products and services that don't really help out. So, um, what number predicts a
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conversation? Hours that you understood, nothing else. Again, do not misunderstand me. I'm not saying hours that you understand every single word, but hours that you understand the message. Okay? And again, this will become more clear on exactly how to do
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this as the series kind of continues. So, I encourage you to stick with it.
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And this exactly why I made it, right? So, okay. So, where does that leave you?
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All of this, where does this leave you? Where do you actually stand after all of this? Well, you do not know your real number. Right now, you don't know. So, you know, when these products and services tell you, again, maybe by the
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end of the series, you'll you'll know a little bit more. Okay, spoiler. Um, but you know, say get fluent after 10,000 sentences in 30 days, right? Um, I don't know. Uh, it's I'm it's dubious, right? It's it's maybe, maybe not. Uh,
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but yeah, I would say that for your goals and for the goals of the person watching this right now, you right now don't know your real number yet. Okay.
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So, years of data, right? Is it streaks? Is it units? Is it grades? Um, because streaks is all just days you open the app. Units is just badges and levels.
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and grades is just proof for the file, right? This is like if you care about A1 to C2, whatever. Um, again, this stuff might not be that helpful for you because really belonging at the table and understanding jokes and cracking
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jokes back. Um, is that an A2 level or is that a C1 level? I mean, depends on the joke, depends on the language, maybe, I don't know, depends on a whole bunch of stuff. Point is, is it's hard
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to give you this clear number. Hopefully, you're understanding this by now cuz that belief needs to be broken so that you stop wasting time on stuff that isn't getting you to where you want to go. Um so the one that counts again
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we're not totally sure but years of number or years of numbers um not one of them is about this not one of them is about again like I've already revealed to you time spent understanding the language now it's more like
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understanding comma the language rather than understanding the language because you're not going to always understand the language but the understanding happens along with the language and slowly those two things become paired the understanding and the language okay so no app no class. No test has ever
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reported this to you ever. And yeah, that a lot of people take advantage of that. A lot of products take advantage of that. Um, every year on the old board told you nothing. Basically, it didn't move you forward. Um, it kept you all
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kept you with all these things, right? Kept you with all this stuff. Kept you with streaks, units, and grades. Great.
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Fantastic. Now, again, I will say grades, they can have the one thing that I'll I'll point out is grades can be of use. Don't get me wrong. They can be of use, especially if you're interested. I have just found that most people are not
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interested. That's all. Okay, cool. So, the thing I want you to keep is that it was never your fault. Right? I hate when people come to me saying, "I'm not a language person. I have all these people when I was younger who learned
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languages so much quick, more quickly than I did. You know, I, you know, maybe when I was 7 years old or below, I would have picked up languages quicker, but my brain this my time of my life that it's
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nonsense. It's all nonsense. It's all nonsense. If you're understanding me right now in English, you have the kind of brain that can learn a language if you do it the right way." So, it was never your fault. Okay? It was also
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never measured by the way not once by anyone. Um that number can be read.
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Nothing you have has been used to read it. Okay? But we are going to get there.
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So now we have a lot of these answers here. Okay? I'm I'm not going to read this all out. You can basically just take a quick screenshot if it helps you just to keep in keep in mind some of the
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initial things the beliefs that we need to break in order for us to really make progress in the language. In order for you in order for you to really make progress in the language.
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Um, yeah. And so now you understand the board that nobody showed you. You understand this now. So again, I want to be clear if this board was wrong. Um, why did you quit? Um, go ahead and let me know uh in in the comments if you're
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interested. If you want to have a conversation with me, I'd love to respond to everybody. Um, and then the next thing that's going to come up here is everyone quits a language at the same spot. Everyone quits at the same spot
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and this is going to be next. So here's what I want to emphasize. This series is going to be important if you're someone who thinks that you're bad at languages or if you've had problems learning languages in the past and your goal is
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to belong at the table. connect with a loved one, understand this loved one in a way. It could be a boyfriend, girlfriend, a husband, a wife, it could be a heritage language, your grandmother, whatever, right? You want to know the side of them that actually
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like developed when they were speaking their mother tongue or, you know, you want to even do a proposal, let's say, like like, you know, kind of like I did a proposal in the target language. This is for you. This is for that person.
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This is for you if that's something that you're interested in. And the next the next thing that we're going to be talking about in this series is something that I've seen that's very interesting. I've now worked with thousands of students you saw in my I
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believe it was slide two in different capacities and what I can tell you is people the majority of people when they quit quit in this very specific spot and in the next piece of this series we're going to talk about that spot and how to
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avoid it so that you can continue to make the progress you want to make. So thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the second part of the series.
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One of the massive benefits that I've received from working with so many different language learners, learning a bunch of different languages, is you begin to see patterns. And patterns really is just kind of data in a way that you can begin to really kind of
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draw some meaning from. And today I want to share with you one of the most interesting patterns. And that's that everybody seems to quit language learning at the same spot, more or less.
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Now, maybe you've tried a language in the past. Maybe you haven't. Maybe this is your first time. But I want to welcome you back to the series where I'm giving you a real education on how language learning works for someone who
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wants to be able to speak it at the dinner table with a loved one. It could be a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a husband, a wife, a grandmother, grandfather, it doesn't matter. The point is is now you're going to finally understand this
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spot that likely led you to quit the first time. And now we're going to avoid that. so that once you understand where this point creeps up, you can begin to push past it in a way that you haven't
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in the past and get real results in language learning. So, let's go right through it. And again, the benefit of this is I've seen this happen to so many language learners and I've seen people fall off and get back on and I've seen
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I've seen all different kinds of ways. And now we're going to move past this one point. You're going to understand what it is and how to move past it properly. Okay? So, different language, different year, same week. It almost
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doesn't matter, almost without exception, that people who start strong end up falling off around this point or they push through. And there's a couple different things that determine one way or the other and we're going to get through it. So, it's a place on a curve
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and it moves, which means it's dynamic. It's not just the same spot every single time. There's a couple things that determine ultimately if you're going to quit or why you quit before, why that happened. And hopefully you're going to
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see yourself in here so that we can avoid it next time. So, everyone at their parents' table laughs. You laugh a second late. I want to remind you as to why you're taking the time to really get this education is because you're sick of
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being at a table where people are speaking and you don't understand it. You're not actually belonging to the conversation. You're somewhere on the sidelines. And we're going to get you through that. Because if you saw the first video in the series, which is the
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video before this, you'll know that um that was something that was incredibly frustrating for me, not being able to belong and wanting to belong. And that was my motivation for acquiring Mandarin in 182 days. So, three years of Spanish
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and you caught about four words when you're sitting at the table. Super frustrating. And then a month passes and you've not opened it once. You've not looked at your textbook or Dualingo or whatever. You've kind of just been
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crushed out of it. And you never decided you were going to stop. You just stopped. You never made the decision, oh, I'm done with this. You just stopped doing it. One day turned into two days.
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Two days turned into a week. And then you just never picked it up and language learning fell by the wayside. So, here's what we're going to go through in today's lesson, okay? Why everyone quits at the same spot. Is it talent or age?
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What actually moves the spot forwards, backwards? How you actually stay on board with language learning no matter what method you're using? And why it will not move on its own? What moves this point forward and backwards? The point that pulls everyone off the
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straight and narrow when it comes to acquiring a language. This is the biggest enemy.
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So, your last three attempts, week one probably felt like you were flying. Okay, week one, you have this new method, new shiny method. It's exciting.
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But then around week five, which is typically where this happens, it stops moving. You stop seeing your progress.
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You were excited. You were following the sentences or maybe you were doing comprehensible input, right? Maybe you were doing a bunch of different stuff and it was exciting until you were like, "Okay, I don't know if I'm actually
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seeing the needle move here. I don't know if I'm wasting my time or really making progress." And then by month two, it's basically gone. You kind of quit.
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And week five is this point where so many language learners drop off. And it's unfortunate because it seems to be predictable to this point that around week four, five is when people fall off, right after a month and the hype dies
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down. Okay. So, it's always the same shape and it's basically every language and it's every time. It's always so many and this is thousands of language learners that I've spoken to across my different communities and that I've seen
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report when they fall off. And I know this because when people come back, they say, hey, I'm going to try this again.
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It was always around week four and week five. Might be the same with you. Let me know if it has been. But either way, we're going to get through it. Then the sentence arrives, maybe I'm just not a
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language person, right? Maybe I just don't have the language gene. That's absolute nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
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And we're going to get we're going to get you through that. We're going to get you over that belief, which is nonsense.
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That same sentence shows up after, never before. This idea that, oh, maybe I'm not a language person occurs because you've fallen off. the method didn't work for you. You weren't able to have the conversation or understand the conversation that you wanted to and then
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you just concluded something silly. Okay, so we're going to get through that. The quit point, the big quit point is kind of what we just discussed. This fivemon five month I wish if it was five months, you'd be in a solid spot. Five
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week period. Five, right at the fiveweek period is when this kind of happens. So not bad luck. This is design. We need to be able to fix the design itself. So study builds knowing about a language.
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You'll remember this from the lesson beforehand where we talk about studying a language and acquiring a language are two completely different things. And when you do them correctly, one of them typically ends in understanding language, speaking the language, being
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able to kick your shoes off at the end of a day and consume shows and content in the language and it feel relaxing.
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And the other one ends in banging your head against a textbook trying to strive for some sort of grade that you never cared about to begin with anyway, if we're being honest. Okay. So, all this effort went into rules and lists and
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tables. Um, all right. And you're counting minutes. You're counting minutes of, right? We'll have Dualingo or these things that say 15 minutes a day until fluency. I hate to break it to you. Not going to happen. At least not
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unless you have 500 years in your life. And that's what you're going to apply to language learning. And I've never met anyone who has that. At least not that I'm aware of. So again, you go to counting minutes and that's not going to
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help you. We need to be counting larger increments of time. And felt progress out after doing all of this is you feel almost nothing. The whole buzz that you were writing to begin with was this buzz of, "Oh, it feels so cool to find this
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new method that promises that this and that without any work and without any real method behind it. Just do these like puzzles on my phone or like repeat after what native speakers are saying from this app." It's it's not it very
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rarely gets you to where you want to go. Okay? Everything measured. Nothing that turns into real understanding of the language. And this is a bit foreshadowing, but understanding is the key to everything. Even speaking, even speaking well, understanding is the
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engine behind it all. Of course, the car requires other pieces, but the engine is one of the most important ones.
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So, the spot arrives early. The spot where you quit every time on schedule. And this probably happens with more than just language learning if I'm being completely honest, but it definitely happens with language learning. That's what I spend a lot of my time studying.
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Uh studying, right? That kind of word just came up again. But really looking into why people are quitting, right?
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So [clears throat] why everyone quits at the same spot? Well, it they feel like progress stops. That's the main thing.
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And then the old way stops it early. You kind of jump into you switch you switch methods back to the old stuff and it even it cuts you even shorter than you expected. So is it talent or age? Let's
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talk about this because a lot of people have that concern. Am I too old to learn a language? I rarely come across people that think they're too young, but too old happens all the time. So an adult holds more than any child does. You need
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to understand if you are someone who thinks that because you're an adult you have some disadvantage to learning a language. You are absolutely wrong. I know you think about oh neuroplasticity and kids picking up languages. I've said this in other videos but kids are
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picking up everything. Like babies are picking up everything all at once. I have a five at this point. He's about to turn 6 months. A six-year-old son. He's figuring out that he has toes right now and he's looking at his feet. He ate his
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first blueberry ever and he's like what is this thing? It's blowing his mind. Right? He doesn't have time to be learning all the intric intricacies of language and that'll and and really that's exactly what he needs. He needs a
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lot of time. So, okay, why is it that you think that children are better than adults? Well, let's break this down. Why adults actually have the advantage? They have concepts. First thing is they already know what this thing is on my
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head. They already know this is a hat. So, when you hear the French word chapo or the Chinese word mouth, right? you you begin to just know, okay, when I'm pointing at this thing and I say those sounds, you can begin to pair those
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sounds with the concept that you already have. Children are learning concepts while they're trying to learn the words.
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Okay, so that's one advantage. Next is patterns. You can begin to see patterns quickly, right? Very, very quickly. If I say, "Yesterday, I bought a pizza at the blank." Right? You know, I'm not going to say, "Yesterday I bought a pizza at
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the skateboard." Or, "Yesterday I bought a pizza at the dishwasher." you know it's going to be store or grocery store or pizzeria. You're going to begin to see patterns because those are the words. Those are the patterns that your
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brain is ready to recognize as an adult. Next, you have choice. This is probably maybe the biggest one. You can choose to take strategies that are actually helpful for language learning and can expedite the process and put 100% of
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your attention at those. Like I said, children are just shooting with a shotgun, spraying and praying. They're hitting a bunch of stuff and they're getting a bunch of stuff. But as adults, we can take our attention and our energy
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and use it like a sniper to point at only the things that are the most effective, which is again, shameless plug, the stuff I talk about here at Fluency Formula. But point is, you have choice and in in terms of what you
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study. So what kids get is they get 10 to, and that's by the way that's a conservative estimate, 10 to 20,000 hours of input handed to them just by living in the world and having no obligations other than growing up and living. So again,
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really, you are not at a disadvantage. You just haven't been shown the right way. And that's what this whole series is about. So there is no talent column.
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Let me be clear. There is no talent column. There is an hours column. There's how much time have you put into the actual right methods. And then that will then equate to your ability in the language.
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So I want to talk quickly about a student that I have inside of my pro community. His name is Chris. Um you may see him in another video in this series.
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Actually, you will see him later in this series where he's actually going to speak and you're going to see. Um, but his last shot before giving up for good is what he said. I'm a 52-y old guy, lots of life experiences. And doing this
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kind of a method gave him a little bit of an understanding and a reward that he's on the right path because he began to see, hey, this 5we thing has happened to me before. Then when he got past it,
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he came out the other end. It started feeling good and he made real progress in the language. So nothing about him changed, but the spot moved. He no longer fell over at this fiveweek spot.
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And by the way, if I said month a second ago, I I mean week. If ever I say five month, I mean five week. Point is is once you begin to believe and actually stick with the system, the fiveweek
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begins to disappear. And you'll see in a moment what happens with this spot where everyone gives up. So is it talent or age? It's neither. Okay. They there are there is just a method column instead.
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There's a method, there's time, but there's no talent or special language gene. I need you to throw that away because it's not a helpful belief and it happens to not even be true. Okay, so what actually moves the spot now? Let's
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talk about this. This is very interesting. Okay, a show you could not follow last month. That's what's going to move the chance of you quitting. Why is it? Because a joke that you or you know what, I'll get to that in a moment.
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I jumped the gun there. A joke that you laughed at before you translated it.
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These are the things that move the spot. Because remember, what is the spot? Let's keep our attention and our eye on the prize here. The spot is the moment that you quit, the moment that you give up, but if you could understand a show
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today that you couldn't understand last month, or you laughed at a joke all of a sudden and you were like, "Oh my god, my brain understood that before I had the time to say before I had the time to
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translate it to English or something like that, you are going to feel very excited about that." And then you're not going to quit because you realize that it's really actually working. And that's super exciting.
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So the spot does not vanish. This spot where you want to quit, this old spot of I want to quit doesn't vanish, but it gets pushed past the finish. And the finish in this case is fluency. Now, I'm
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going to be honest here. Fluency is a bit of a nebulous term. What does fluency mean here? We're talking about conversational fluency. That's what I aim at here at Fluency Formula. I aim at the ability to do three things. Okay,
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first is understand a native speaker. Not necessarily at the fastest speed or the most complex topic, but you could understand a native speaker. Second thing, be understood by a native speaker. Of course, the goal is conversation. As my mom used to tell me
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when I was a kid, right, that I would just monologue at her and she'd say, "No, a conversation is the ping-ponging back and forth between two people. It's a dialogue conversation." So, your ability, of course, to contribute to the
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conversation. And then the third thing that I aim at is the ability to enjoy shows, other people having conversations that you're maybe not, you know, a part of, but you can watch a show or a movie and enjoy it all the same. Because
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again, your ability, your conversational fluency, the ability in that skill is good enough that you can be a third party and still enjoy it. And this is where you be able to sit at the table with your wife, husband, girlfriend,
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boyfriend, family or extended family and still be a part of the situation even if you're not the one speaking at that moment. You're still a part of the environment, which is what we all want and we're all aiming at. This is
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especially what I wanted when I was, you know, learning the language for my wife.
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So hopefully this makes sense. The spot doesn't vanish. It just moves past fluency and then it kind of fades into the distance cuz you're like look what is there to doubt? What is there to quit? I'm already really where I want to
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be. Right? So progress you can feel backed by a number and that that's number that it holds you to the weeks that you cannot. So the point is is once you can get once you understand what we're aiming at and how to push forward,
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what ends up happening is you stop quitting because you get to the point that you want to get to before you have a chance to get off the get off the roller coaster or whatever you want to call it. And that's that's what we're
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going to learn how to do. So, even the slow videos made no sense. This is Steve talking about Portuguese. This is another one of my students. And I'm showing you this, by the way. I'm showing you this stuff so you understand
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that there's lit literally tons of different languages, lots of different people, and still the same thing happens. They get to this point, which we're going to walk you through. We're walking through right now where you're not going to quit anymore. And that's an
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amazing feeling because if you don't quit and you adhere, that is the most important thing under anything, under any method, under anything. You have to adhere to something. Now, ideally, if you're adhering to the right direction, you're going to get to your destination
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quicker. If you're going the wrong direction, obviously, it's not going to help. Um, so anyway, let's talk about Steve here for a second. And Steve, if you're watching, love you, man. Okay, so just passed the 100 hour mark in
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Portuguese, and it's definitely happening. Now, I'm not going to read this whole thing out, but you can go ahead and read it. The point is he started at basically zero, as you can see here. Here. Okay, he started at zero
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and then he just got to a point where I just finished watching where he understood 95% of everything said of everything said. Now, of course, he's putting in real time. Again, you can you can read Steve's story here. You can you
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can take a look. He's putting in real time. And it might be different for you with your background and the language you're learning and how much time you're putting in and all these things. But the point is he's now well past this point
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where most people quit. Why? Because of this slide back here. Like I just showed you this last slide. Let me go back.
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This guy right here, he's already passed this line. He's already passed this line, so he's not gonna quit. He knows it works, right? So, you can go ahead and read Steve's thing. But three months later, native Brazilians at full speed.
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Native Brazilians at full speed. So, understand this will really work. Okay? He did not get better at languages. He got hours that counted. He got hours that really counted. He didn't all of a sudden turn into some super language
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learning Portuguese robot. No, he just got the right things that counted. So, what actually moves the spot? Felt progress. When you feel the progress that you're actually making, like Steve just talked about, backed by a number that you can check. He said, "Hey, I'm
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at 100 hours and I'm already understanding at this level." So, now why it will not move on its own, you want to move this point and throw it forwards as far as you can. For my American friends out there, you want to
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punt it down the field. Okay? For my other friends out there, basically, you just want to push it into the distance and deal with it later. And by the way, later means never because it disappears in the end. Okay? So why it will not
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move on its own? Here's the part that nobody says. It's the right hours at the right level every week. Now, there's two rights here. Okay? Understand this. Two rights, which means you have to be doing things correctly. Have to be doing
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things correctly despite what I said earlier about adherence. Of course, it have to be you have to be adhering to the correct thing every week because two missed weeks and you're back on the old line. What happens is, okay, you're
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moving up. Awesome. But then you miss and you come back and you miss and you come back and you're flat again and what happens is you quit because you never got to that point where you saw it actually working for you. And this is
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some of the p these are some of the patterns that I see with thousands of people thousands of people and not just in my communities not just in my programs but in just you can just read this online and people say how long
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they've been trying and they say you know I've been trying for you know a couple years and whatever but they're trying for a couple years was a bunch of different methods that they tried for just over a month and then lost steam
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and they tried something else. So again you have to do the right hours at the right level but every week you have to stick with it. Two miss weeks and you're back on the old line like I just
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mentioned. Okay. So the curve flattens exactly where it always did. The same thing happens if you get off the train.
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You need to stick on it and make sure that train is going in the right direction.
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So why it creeps back alone? The old scoreboard creeps back. This goes back to our former lesson that you hopefully have already watched. If you haven't watched it, go back and watch the lesson before this. Okay. By week five, you
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start counting minutes again and all these different like scattered apps and and methods and whatever and not what you actually understood. We're not counting the correct thing anymore. And when we do this, the curve flattens and we quit. And then we conclude ridiculous
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things like we are not language people. And I don't want that to happen to you.
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Okay? So this is not weakness. That's just gravity. You're just being pulled down by the law of fluency. Gravity.
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You're not going to get there if you don't do the right stuff for the right amount of time. That's the equation.
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So the ones who got past it, they did not have more willpower. That's something else also is you might think, "Oh, I don't have the discipline or the willpower." They didn't have more of that. They just had the right hours
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chosen for them. they were shown how to do it correctly. And someone watching whether or not those hours happened.
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That's something else, right? That's something else that's so powerful. If you have someone in your life that you're learning for that you're that you're in my case, you might know I did it in secret. I didn't tell my wife and
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then I eventually told her in the end blah blah blah. There's a whole thing.
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I'll tell you. If you're interested, ask me. I'll let you know in the comments.
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But you can just watch my other videos and you'll see. Point is, if you have someone who you're learning for and they know you're learning, then you could have them be your accountability. The point is, if you have someone watching
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you or helping you make sure you're doing the right hours, these this series is to help you with the right hours, but I can't do the accountability piece for you, at least not in this way, right?
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Not through YouTube. There's other ways that I can help you, but for now, if you're learning for someone that you love, just just get them to help you.
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The point is they can make sure the hours happen. Commit to them. So, now we have all of these four answers unlocked. I want you to take a screenshot of this. Again, we're building on every single lesson in this
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series so that we can begin to really move forward in the language and speak this thing that we want to allow us to connect or help us connect with someone we love. Like I mentioned, okay, again, that's my exact story. That's why I'm
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here doing this. So, why it will not move on its own is because alone, the old scoreboard creeps back in by week five. This annoying week five that just keeps happening to so many people. Okay?
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So, you need to have, as we can see here, ding ding ding ding, winner, winner. progress that you can feel, not just hope is working. Progress that you can feel.
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Okay, so we went through this video. Hopefully, this helps you understand exactly what's been going wrong. The next video in this series is the only hours that count towards fluency. Okay, most of you were told what to count. You
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definitely watching this right now were probably told what to count by this app or that program or whatever, and they don't actually count. They don't.
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Otherwise, you probably wouldn't be watching this right now. So which hours actually count? That's what's next. In the next video in the series, we are going to now break down all this time that I'm talking about in that you need
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to put into something you need to put into the language. We're going to break down exactly what that is, how to do it so that you can make real progress and no longer wonder anymore. So I hope you're enjoying the series. Let me know
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down in the comments if you're how you're feeling about it and if it's helping you. Again, I'm making this because I imagine you're walking in the exact same footsteps that I did where the reason again I've said it a hundred
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times. the reasons why I wanted to learn the language. And so I uh look forward to seeing you in the next one. Make sure you stay strong. We're going to make it through this series and by the end of
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it, you're gonna have an education regarding language learning um that you're probably not going to find anywhere else. So, thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video.
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You've done hundreds of hours in your target language, but you sat down with your wife or your boyfriend or your husband or your girlfriend and you sat down with her and her family, tried to have a conversation, and you didn't
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understand anything. Maybe you didn't even try to have the conversation. You were just around the conversation and disappointed that none of it made its way into the old coconut. So today, um, we're going to build on the series that
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we've been talking about where I'm going to help you belong to that conversation and understand where to put your time so that when you're investing time in this effort that you have to learn the language, acquire a language, and be
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part of the conversation, connect with a loved one, know the other side of them, and really be part of that, which is again a lot like my own story. actually pretty much exactly my own story. Um, you actually know what to do. That's
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what we're building here today. And so again, this is the next part of the series. If you haven't seen the rest of it, please go back and start from the first video because that way you'll get the whole context and you'll really get
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a full education on how to acquire a language so that you never need to waste time on methods ever again. You can just understand how this is done and then just move forward actually doing this stuff. Okay. So, last video we ended
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with me talking about we're going to get into where you need to be putting your time and we talked about where people normally fall off. Here we're going to get into exactly what we're going to be doing with the time we're investing so
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that we don't fall off and we actually move towards conversational fluency. So, this is the only thing we're going to be counting towards fluency. This is what matters. It's all going to be contained here and in the rest of the series. So,
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let's just start. you've done hundreds of hours and unfortunately almost none of them counted. So that sucks. But some of them will be of help but not not like this. This is kind of something else. So there is a window and there's a very
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specific window we're aiming for when we're doing immersion language learning really anything. And unfortunately your previous strate strategies uh missed it for the most part. For the most part from what I've seen and again I'll remind you I work with thousands of
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students uh across my different communities and I see this time and time again. So, you've probably said this out loud. I'm guessing you've said this out loud. I've done hundreds of hours, right? I've done hundreds or at least
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tens of hours, let's say, right? Then you had a dinner with their family and you followed none of it. And that sucks.
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It's the worst feeling ever. That's the one I had. That's the one that pushed me to go and learn Mandarin in 182 days.
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So, both are true at the same time that you've done a bunch of time and it didn't translate, excuse the pun, translate, didn't translate to anything when it actually mattered for you. So, here's what we're going to break down
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today. What actually installs a language? How much do you have to understand? Why didn't your previous hours land? And what's inside the window for you? Okay. And then we're going to get to hours that take you to the table.
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To the table where the language is being spoken that you want to belong. And again, I'll remind you, most people are doing this for a loved one. That's increasingly been the people that I'm helping. But you might just be wanting
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to acquire the language and you're like, look, I want to speak this thing. I want to understand this thing. And I just want to get there. All of it applies.
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Okay. So start with what a language is. First of all, you don't recall a language. You run it like a program on a computer. You don't recall facts and figures like when you were learning history and you heard who the sixth
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president of the United States was. That is recalling a fact. A language is not a fact. It is actually a system that you run regularly kind of in an automated way. The same way as I'm talking to you
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right now and you're understanding it's automated. You're not like decoding all of the sounds I'm saying to make it into meaning. Um, well, I hope not. And so anyway, the point is you are just understanding the language cuz you're
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running a system and that's what we're going to build. I mean, name the last time you conjugated in your own language, right? Or or any language. I mean, unless one, it's one that you are trying to learn through Duolingo or a
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textbook or whatever, but you're not conjugating right now. It's just happening for you. You're just running the system. And yeah, you never did it.
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It just ran. The whole system just ran. That's what we're building. So to build two different things, knowing about it is not running it. Hopefully you understand that by now. Again, a quick recap. When you study a language, when
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you're studying these facts and figures like you did in, I don't know, like history class, like I mentioned, you're learning rules and tables, word lists, and a score on a test, you are probably not aiming at that. And if you are, this
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might not be the best series for you. If you're aiming to be able to speak and understand a language, then keep watching. Okay, understood hours is running it. This is what equates to running it. Basically, you follow it
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live. meaning just arrives in your brain and no translating, no translating in your head. Okay? You don't need to do that. It's just happening automatically for you. The same way as the English that I'm speaking right now is
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translating into concepts in your brain right now. Okay? For example, I'm going to say flower. And automatically you have this idea of this pretty thing in a garden or maybe the thing that you make dough out of. But the point is you had a
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concept, one or the other. Okay? Both are real and only one of them is the language. Okay? Hopefully, you're beginning to understand this. The technical term is comprehensible input.
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You hear me talk about this a bit on the channel. Comprehensible input is this technical term that this amazing guy, Dr. Steven Crashen, kind of came up with, but I'm really only going to in this series, I'm really only going to
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say it once, and then the rest of it is going to be in my own words. I'm going to describe what it is we're doing. So, we don't have to throw around technical ter terms too much. But just know if you
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hear comprehensible input, that's roughly mostly what we're talking about here, whether I say it or anyone else says it. Okay, so study builds one of these two things and only hours build the other. Right? Study builds knowing about it, but only hours done the
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correct way, which is what we're talking about in today's lesson, builds the actual system that you can run.
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So, one sentence on grammar really quickly. You follow rules you could never explain. Understand that when you're doing grammar in English, let's say, right? Good example. You are following rules that you couldn't explain to me. For example, when I say
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I'll say two sentences to you, okay? The big red dog. The big red dog. And now the other sentence. The red big dog. The red big dog. One of them sounds correct, and one of them is probably the way that
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you would say it. But you're not going to be able to tell me the name of that rule or when it was instated or how to apply it. You just know that one sounds right and one sounds wrong. That is the
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cheat code. really sorry to throw around a buzz word but that is the cheat code to getting fluent quicker is not caring about studying grammar but just acquiring a system that runs in an automated way. Okay. So you absorbed
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grammar you never studied grammar at least for your first language. And if you did study grammar that was after you already understood the language right think about that. So what actually installs a language? Hours that you mostly understand. So how much
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do you have to understand? You said hours that I mostly understand. Let's say you're starting from absolute zero.
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Like complete zero. So how do you understand things? How how much do I have to understand for it to work? Okay.
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Well, here is the comprehension window. Here's where you want to be. And this has actually changed from my previous recommendations. The more people I work with and the more that I go through my own language learning processes, I see
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that it's not where we used to think. So, here's what's important. Under 30 is noise. Over 90 is just television. Now, television isn't actually a bad thing.
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Um, but the point is over 90 is, you know, you could have better bang for your buck. Here's what it looks like. If you understand something 30 to 50%, I'd say that's solid. Now, I used to think that it was higher, 75 maybe, and it
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still could be, don't get me wrong. But I'm starting to feel like 30 to 50 is actually where you really want to be because after all, your ability to say, "Oh, I understand this 30% or 29%." Is, you know, you're not going to be able to
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do that. These are rough estimates, but the point is 30 to 50% where you understand half or maybe a bit less is solid. It's a good place to be. Could you go up here? Could you Could this go
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over to here? Yeah, totally. That's totally fine. up here bit of bit bit wasted potential right it could be a value and here wasted potential could be a value but here's roughly this window is where I aim for okay
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so 30 to 50% understood that hour counts that hour if we went back to our last uh lesson in the series this is the kind of hour I'm talking about this is what's going to move the needle for you here's
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where you want to stay okay so how much do you have to understand and by the way the question about what if I'm starting from absolute zero we will be answering that in this series. So, if you ask me
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down below in the comments, hey, how am I going to do that? I'm going to tell you, keep watching the series because it's coming. Okay. So, how much do you have to understand? About 30 to 50% of it. That's where you want to be. About
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30 to 50. Okay. Now, can it be up to 70, 75, 80? Yes. Can it be 20? Yes, it can be. But in my experience, there are better places to be. That's around 30 to 50. Let's call it 30 to 60. Okay. So,
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why didn't your hours land? That's next. every one of them landed outside of that little window. Let's look at everything that most people do. Let's look at most ways that people acquire a language and then let's apply it to that 30 to 50%
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window and see if it holds. And let's see if you can identify what you typically do and see if it falls in there too. So the textbook or the class here is where you're knowing about a language. It's graded and you're never
Speaker A
running a system, right? You're learning, like I said, grammar, conjugation tables, blah blah blah blah blah. It's very boring. It's very curriculum, like very specific curriculum based. It's not dynamic for student to student and it doesn't take your interests into consideration. So,
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it's hard to show up all the time. Okay, the daily streak, I'm talking your Dualingos and other such spin-offs.
Speaker A
Okay, this is activity, not hours. We talked about this. They're measuring your activity in the app, not actual time spent engaging with the language in a way that's been shown to really have you have you move towards conversational
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fluency. Okay, English subtitles on. huge question that I get asked all the time when I'm doing my comprehensible input which we you know the technical term from earlier when I do this should I have English subtitles on or mother
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tongue subtitles when you do that when you do that you are reading the story and you never ran the language your brain is going to take the easiest path to meaning and so what that means is if I'm listening to a language that I don't
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understand yet and I'm reading subtitles that I do understand it's going to be hard for me to convince my brain to pay more attention to the confusing stuff that I'm listening rather than the stuff on screen that I understand. And so
Speaker A
you're wasting the opportunity of allowing your brain to use its natural processes to decode what it's hearing using what it's seeing to eventually provide meaning to you. And also again, our goal our goal here is conversational fluency. And so what does that mean?
Speaker A
Well, that means that when we're having a conversation, are there going to be subtitles there? Probably not. So you can't rely on those. Don't train yourself that way if you don't want to play that way. Okay. the podcast in the
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car. And also, this this goes for if you're listening to stuff when you're sleeping. Let me just call this out now.
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You're not going to learn a language while you're asleep. At least not by playing a podcast beside your bed.
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Sorry. Anyway, the podcast in the car, halfard, but not an hour that counts. You're not really paying attention. This is passive immersion. It can be helpful at more advanced levels. Really early on, not going to do much for you. Videos
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about the language. So, language learning YouTube is just procrastination. Okay. Obviously, right now you're learning, you know, about language through language learning YouTube or wherever you're watching this video. Here's the caveat, right? Is you do need to have the education to
Speaker A
understand what you should be doing and then once you understand, you should go and do it, right? But if you don't understand, you don't have a comprehensive understanding of what to do. You might just be wasting time or
Speaker A
you're going slower than you could. You may have figured this out eventually in your own time. There is value to spending time understanding the way people are learning languages, especially people who have thousands of students or have done it before
Speaker A
themselves. Okay, shameless plug. But the point is that will help you because it's I mean this goes back to I think it was Lincoln or someone who said this.
Speaker A
Sorry, let me know in the comments. But someone said if I had I think it was like if I had eight hours to cut down a tree, I'd se I'd spend the first seven sharpening my axe. And the idea here is,
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okay, you're sharpening your axe by understanding when you go and cut the tree down, you use your axe to cut the tree or in our case, study the language.
Speaker A
Having a sharp enough axe or knowing what you're doing with your time is of value. But if you just watch this endlessly and not do the actual work that we're talking about in this series, you are wasting time. And then the flash
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card pile. Flash cards never worked for me. A lot of people say that, right? Um because they're doing recognition alone and never run in context. This will make more sense as we go through the series, but the point is there is a way to do
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flashcards that is super effective and super helpful and I would argue one of the highest return on investments of your time when you're approaching a new language. But most people think flashcards don't work for them because again they're practicing recognizing
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words, not recalling and retrieving words. They're different. Not super important for right now. But the point is all of this stuff that you've probably done has fallen outside of the window where you want to be to move towards the point where you get to
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conversational fluency. So again, hundreds of hours spread across all of this and they were all outside this key beautiful little window that you need to be hitting to move forward.
Speaker A
So I did exactly this Japan native content from day one. Now, again, bit of an exaggeration, but I did 3 years of Japanese and almost none of the stuff I was doing landed. Or again, exaggeration. A lot of it did actually
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land, but I just wasn't doing it at as an efficient of a rate as I could have.
Speaker A
And I'll tell you a little bit about that. Okay. So, what I was doing was less immersion and just mostly noise because I was lucky enough that eventually I figured the right stuff.
Speaker A
But when I first started doing Japanese, I'm not going to get into my story too deep. You probably know it by now. Um, and if you don't go back and watch some of the earlier videos in the series, but
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the point is is that I spent a lot of time doing raw comprehensible input, it was kind of all over the place. Some of it was good, some of it was not. And I I didn't really do many other side
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strategies that could accelerate the process like what I just mentioned with a certain uh way of doing flashcards.
Speaker A
Um, but the point is I wasted a lot of time just banging my head against a wall. That's me in Japan later on. Okay, so hear this part properly. Okay, I want you to really understand this. You didn't fail. Stop thinking that you can
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even fail a language. You can't. You You didn't fail. You really succeeded or you quit, which is what we talked about in the last lesson. But your hours were aimed wrong. You were just aiming them at the wrong spot. This is misdimed
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effort, not wasted effort. It's not that you gained nothing. You have gained something and maybe a lot actually. It's just that now we can calibrate it in the right way. That's aiming at sitting at the table and having the conversation or
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knowing your partner in their language or all of these things that I've mentioned, right? Being able to, this is a small thing, but I actually love this.
Speaker A
When I'm in public and there's no one else who speaks Mandarin, but my wife and I, we can just speak all of a sudden and it's like we have our own little secret language. Now, of course, Mandarin, we have over a billion
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speakers, so it's not that secret, but it's still pretty powerful. And if you want the same thing with your partner or your friend or your grandmother or whoever, keep watching.
Speaker A
So, why didn't the hours land? They just landed outside the window. They were doing something, just they weren't that effective. It's, you know, you saw that scale earlier of being more effective and less effective, like I mentioned, and they were just not hitting that
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bullseye that we needed to hit. It's kind of like, you know, in carnivals, you know that game where you shoot water and you're shooting it into the hole and like as you do it, the like little horse or whatever raises up the little guy,
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little thing. Again, there's a bunch of things and stuff and whatever in that sentence. I hope hopefully you're understanding where I'm coming from.
Speaker A
Point is, you were kind of like shooting the water and rather than it hitting right where it needed to hit, it was kind of like going all over the place.
Speaker A
Um, and now you're understanding, okay, let's just shoot the water directly in that hole and get the horse to where it has to go. That's what we're learning to do now. So, um, what's inside of the window for you? So, what should you
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actually be doing? Again, 0 to 30, 30 to 50, 50 to 70, 70 to 100. Understand that this moves, it shifts. So, the same person months later, the window slid. If I watch the same video over and over and over, let's
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say I watch it for something crazy like 60 days in a row, day one, it might be over here for me, okay? Might be over here. And then day like 59, it could be over here for me in terms of what I'm
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actually hearing and understanding. Depends on the video and whatever. But my point is this shifts and the window slides. So if you want to keep it in this nice little spot here, the content that you're watching and that you're
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finding needs to move as well. And this is one of the more intricate pieces of the whole process of figuring out what to watch when. But we go through it in the series as you could have guessed. So
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point is is this isn't some static window. So don't think that something that you watched in the past is going to continue to pay you that effort or that that value that it paid you day one because it won't. It slides.
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So this slides per language, per level, per person. It it it all kind of varies to be honest. But what you need to know is that this month's window is not the same as next quarters. And again for all
Speaker A
my business friends out there, quarter is just three months, right? It's not what you're doing today is not the same as what you're going to be doing in 3 months, unless you're moving incredibly slowly, which the whole point of this
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series is to avoid that. So, okay, here's the real question. Which shows which words in what order? Well, again, your window this month is you have a bunch of noise, a bunch of entertainment, and some stuff needs to
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go in here. You need to find that right stuff. The window is actually the easy part. The contents are the job. The easy part is being like, "Okay, 30 to 50. I know roughly what that is. I can
Speaker A
understand some things, don't understand others. But then it's finding the content that actually satisfies those needs as it dynamically shifts. That's kind of a bit of a challenge because one thing in here that I don't mention is it
Speaker A
also has to be interesting to you. If you're watching something about the like the I don't know horiculture, Irish horiculture of the 1600s, like sorry if that's something you're into, but that's really boring. That's really boring. And so it's going to be hard to do that even
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if you understand 30 to 50%. So this content sort of uh like scavenger hunt can be where the challenge is. Okay. And again I've heard people say this. This is a real quote from my community.
Speaker A
Right. Um right. So people saying the hardest thing is finding content at your level. It is. It is. And I can't just tell you exactly what to watch every day. I can't. I wish I could. I can't.
Speaker A
But a beginner playlist lasts about a month if you're doing this regularly and you're showing up. It's hard for me to say a month on the dot because if you do two hours every single day, it's different than someone's doing who's
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doing one hour every day obviously, right? So, it can last about a month. Take that with a grain of salt. But your window does move basically every month if you're showing up regularly is what I would say. Here's a quick hint for you.
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Okay? I want you to look at this. This is super important. The first 1,000 words are a huge thing that's going to give you access to the next level in language learning. I've said this in other videos and I'll say it really
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quickly, so listen closely, okay? The top 1,000 to about 1500 words in frequency in frequency make up about 75 to 80% of a language. Meaning all the words you're hearing me say in this entire series, about 75% of them are all
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the same. Well, 705% of those words are all the same words. So, if you just learn these words upfront in any language, look how much of a language you're pumping into your brain. And then you're going to allow comprehensible
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input to put those words into context. And again, we're running a system that allows us to automate the whole thing rather than learning facts and figures and declenions and conjugations. We are just putting certain words into our brain. Then we're allowing the natural
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process of the language and the pattern recognition abilities of our brain to sort it all out for us by shooting that water directly into the hole that's going to move the horse towards in our case and your case conversational
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fluency. Okay. So again, if that sounds confusing, don't worry. We continue to break all these elements down throughout the series. Keep watching. Stay with me. So why didn't your hours land? You saw that um they land outside the window. And
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what's inside the window for you is the part that nobody hands you, right? You have to go and find this. You have to go and find this kind of stuff. But now you know what to do. And these are the kind
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of hours that when you put in takes you to the table. And again, I use the table, but it could be again takes you to understanding your partner or all these things that I've mentioned that are the things that you and I actually
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care about when it comes to language learning. Not am I A1, A2, or do I have a government job? Unless that is what you care about, of course. Okay. Okay, cool. Have to say that as a disclaimer because there's always someone that's
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like, hey, I care about that. Hey, if you care about that, more power to you, dude. Anyway, guys, that was the end of the video at this point. I want you to understand that we've got we've made a lot of
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progress so far. The next thing we're going to be talking about is you will never speak better than you understand.
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We are going to break down where speaking comes into all of this. You're now beginning to understand comprehension, which is again admittedly the engine of the whole car. But now we need to put on the steering wheel and
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the seats and the tires and all this stuff. And that's what we're going to be doing here. So you will never speak better than you understand. And so let's begin to bring speaking into the equation. We're going to talk about when
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do you start speaking and almost everyone gets this backwards. when you're supposed to start speaking. And this is one of the most dangerous things in my opinion in language learning if your goal is to get to conversational fluency as quickly as possible. So
Speaker A
again, I hope you're enjoying the series. Um, if you are, let me know in the comments. Stay strong. I encourage you. Like I always say, adherence is number one. If you could adhere to just going through the series, you're going
Speaker A
to know so much more than 99% of language learners. And that will make me very, very happy because the effect and the impact that I want to have on you is that you never need to question again, what should I do to learn a language?
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you can just go and do it and finally belong at that table. Speak the language that you want to speak and uh get more out of language learning and all the interpersonal connections that you will have in life. So, thank you so much for
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watching. Stay strong. The next the next one we're talking about introducing speech into this whole process. Like I said, I'll see you in the next one. Hope you're enjoying it and uh stay tuned.
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See you in the next one. You've got to a point in your language learning journey where you understand a lot now. Now, that might be easy stuff or intermediate stuff, maybe even advanced stuff, but now you're ready to start speaking. And
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when you go to speak, you just freeze and nothing comes out. You understand what you're hearing. You just don't know how to make the sentences come out correctly in the way that you meant them to come out. And this happens all the
Speaker A
time. And in this video, we're going to go through exactly why that happens and how to fix it. This is a next part of the series that we're going through to help you belong at the table where you
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can speak to your loved one, understand their language, belong at a table where really you're a part of the conversation and you're really contributing or you're just listening. But either way, this video we're going to talk about the part
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where you are really beginning to contribute. So, what you first need to understand is you will never speak better than you understand. And this is one of the major reasons why the multiple thousand sentence method or repeating after native speakers on some
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app, repeating sentences while you're driving in the car. This is why it gets you to a point where you feel pretty good. You feel like you're making progress, but you don't actually feel like you belong at the table. you can't
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understand when Auntie Jenny, right, says something to you and you're like, "Oh, Auntie Jenny said something that I can't understand." Because again, you haven't built up the comprehension. And then even worse, you can't say anything back because maybe you have built up the
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comprehension now, but you haven't built the real skill that's going to get you to the right spot when it comes to speaking. So, we're going to break that down here. Okay. So, your mouth has a ceiling and you have never seen it. You
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need to understand the way speaking now ties into this whole thing. If you've gone through the series so far, you're now at the perfect point to understand where speaking fits into all of it.
Speaker A
First thing is that freezing is not a courage problem. Now, it can be, but usually it's not. There's something bigger that's actually knocking at the door. So, this is the sentence that I hear the most. I understand everything
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and then I open my mouth, right? I have actual comprehension of the stuff I listen to regularly and then I go to say the stuff that I do know how to understand and it doesn't come out the way that I studied it. So 95%
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comprehension and it does nothing for your speaking. Why is that the case? And how do we change this? Well, you booked the tutor. You did the speaking challenge and you came out more convinced that you are bad at this
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because you're doing the wrong stuff. So we need to change that. You were not failing. I'll tell you this again. You were not failing, but you were early.
Speaker A
You were speaking at the wrong time. Okay. So here's what we're going to cover in today's lesson. We're going to talk about why does speaking from day one backfire? What decides how well you'll actually speak? Why do you freeze
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even when you understand most of what you hear? And then when do you start and who decides? And then ultimately the floor under every sentence will begin to make sense to you. So start with what speaking actually is. Let's understand
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this. Speaking reads out a model. It does not build one. Okay. Let's understand exactly the mechanics of how this work here, how this works. So when you're loaded, it's kind of like loading a weapon, right? You can't shoot from a
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gun that you have no bullets in. You can't pour from a glass that you have no water in. This should make sense to the everyday average person, right?
Speaker A
So when you've loaded with comprehension, what's going to happen is you do some input, then you build the model of the language in your brain, how it actually works. This happens on autopilot just by doing a lot of of the
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right input, which you will have seen in the last lesson. If you haven't seen it, go back and watch it. Very important that you watch this all in order. And then eventually you get to speech of various levels. Can be better, can be
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worse, but we get there. Okay? But if you haven't yet loaded, you have no input. It's completely empty. You're just kind of guessing. You're saying stuff that you know a native speaker might say, but you don't know when to
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say it. You don't know actually if you're saying it at the right time. All this kind of stuff. And that just comes from if you're repeating stuff on, I don't know, from random courses or random projects or random places that
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are like just repeat native speakers and eventually you speak the language. Well, not really. Because again, one of the big issues with any method that's telling you to just learn these set sentences or repeat after these specific words or whatever is it's not actually
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getting you ready for the spontaneity that conversations naturally organically have. When you're in a conversation, you don't know what the next person's going to say all the time. And so if you just have a set sentence, what good is it
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saying, I used the knife to cut a cucumber? Like what good is it with that set sentence if what they asked you is, "Hey, did you have a good time at, you know, the festival yesterday?" Right? So hopefully this makes sense. You need to
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understand the model of the language, how it actually works through enough input. And then what happens at the end is this beautiful thing called speech.
Speaker A
So if you don't have a model, there's nothing to read out. There's nothing that speaking is going to do for you because speaking just reflects the model of the language that's already in your brain. And so you need that model first.
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Okay? Speaking proves the model exists, but it doesn't build it. It doesn't build the comprehension model. It just proves that it was already there. And if it wasn't already there, there's nothing to prove. So what happens if you fire
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early? Well, if you say it wrong a thousand times before the model exists, you know what's going to happen is the 1,000 and1st time you say it is probably also going to be wrong. So if you speak too early, the issue is you're going to
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begin to make mistakes a habit. And when mistakes become a habit, they're very hard to undo. One of the reasons why people can actually move so quickly with certain methods when they learn languages the right way is that they've
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avoided pitfalls. And when you avoid pitfalls, then you're able to just move more smoothly to the place that you want to go. So if you're doing the wrong sets all the time, then you're basically just moving in the wrong direction. Like I
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said a while ago in an earlier lesson, it's almost like adhering to a train that's going the wrong way. It's like you're moving further from the destination. Okay? You need to understand that you need to adhere to the right direction.
Speaker A
So why does speaking backfire from day one? Is because you're firing before anything has loaded. And then what happens is then if you're saying all this stuff that you don't fully understand, you might be making mistakes. And if you make mistakes,
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those turn into habits. And it's really hard to unmake. Okay. So the speaking floor, what is the speaking floor? This is the rule under all of it. You speak at the level you understand. Well, actually, you speak probably at a lower level than you
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understand, but regardless, never above it. You never will speak at a level beyond what you understand. I mean, just think about it. What would it even look like and be like to speak at a level beyond what you understand? Like, you're
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just saying random stuff that's just coming into your brain randomly. Like, that just doesn't happen. So, you're only going to speak at the level that you understand or below. Here's what it looks like. Early on, you understand this much and you speak a little bit
Speaker A
less. Actually, you know what? This is probably Did not mean to bring that up. Okay. Uh allow, I guess.
Speaker A
Nope. Full screen. Let's come back here. How do I turn this? I don't know how I did that.
Speaker A
Bear with me. There we go. It's gone. Perfect. Okay, cool. Point is is the speaking floor. Okay, you never speak at a level beyond what you understand.
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So early, here's what it looks like. What I meant to do is this. You're probably about here. Here maybe early on. Again, early is kind of general. You don't really know when this is later.
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Same thing happens. Your understanding climbs. So does your speech. And then later still, same thing happens. Always your speech is going to lag behind.
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Okay? The lower bar never passes the upper one. It just follows it. So you need to push this guy up and then this guy can come up too.
Speaker A
Raise the ceiling and the floor rises. How do we raise the ceiling? Well, we do it by doing more immersion. We do it by, again, if you go back to the earlier lessons in this series, I talk about
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exactly where to shoot the water into the hole to make the little, you know, carnival horse move closer to the goal or whatever it's called. Yeah, you need to be doing that more often and then your speaking will follow it quite
Speaker A
quickly. So, you cannot pour out of what was never poured in. Right? If you have a glass and you try to pour it, it'll only work if there's already water in it.
Speaker A
So, let's talk about another student that I have uh inside of Fluency Formula. This is a few hundred hours banked and then he sat down. Day one, he was day one in Mexico and you'll see his post here in a moment. And also, you're
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going to see him at the end of this series. All of these students that you hear about, they will all talk. You'll hear from all of them. Day one, um, he could barely ask for water. But day three, um, and four and a half hours at
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a table in Spanish with his girlfriend and his girlfriend's family, exactly what you are aiming to do, too. Same thing that I was aiming to do. He did the same thing with the exact system that you're seeing right now in this
Speaker A
series. He did the exact thing. Okay, the input was banked before his mouth caught up. Day one of trying to speak, he was trying to stumble out words, but the system began to automate. And by day four, he was having full conversations.
Speaker A
And this happens only because the model was in the brain already. If you want to look at the way he actually wrote it out himself, you can go ahead and do that.
Speaker A
But long story short, he went to Mexico for two weeks. Was his first time outputting. Here's exactly what we just spoke about a second ago, day one, day three. Um, and again, I've featured him before cuz he's fantastic. Um, but yeah,
Speaker A
it feels insane when you get there. I want to highlight this. Feels insane when you get there. And you will get there. And again, he said it wouldn't have been possible without fluency formula. Shameless plug, but thank you
Speaker A
so much. Appreciate you, man. Okay, so what decides how well you'll speak? How much you already understand. That's it.
Speaker A
How much you'll already understand is going to decide decide how well you'll speak. Now, of course, there is the other element of practicing, you know, the muscle memory and stuff like that for certain languages, but the vast majority is not going to be that because
Speaker A
even if you have a terrible accent, if you understand everything you mean to say super well, the chance that someone else will too is pretty high. So, the next piece is um when do you freeze or when why you freeze even when you
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understand, excuse me, this is the one that kind of hurts, okay? Is that it's not courage. It's not practice. Here's what it is. Is that your ceiling is just not where you want it to be. Because here's what you
Speaker A
understand and here's the sentence in your head. What you want to say the sentence in your head, you might understand this piece of it. You don't understand everything here. And so what's going to happen is that a mouth
Speaker A
that's trying to go beyond the ceiling locks up. You are trying to take pieces of a sentence that you don't fully understand. You might understand it in English or whatever your mother tongue is, you're trying to say it in your
Speaker A
target language and it won't come out properly. The reason why it won't come out properly is because again the the model of the language has not been built the way it needs to be in order for it to really succeed.
Speaker A
So again, this is a direct quote that I've seen before on my YouTube channel.
Speaker A
The words don't come and when they do, the grammar is all wrong. That was me at my in-laws table in Mandarin. This was literally the same as me. So this was a comment that I actually saw, but this is
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the same thing that happened to me is even though that night where you saw me in the video from the f from the one of the early videos in the series, you saw me speaking that night I tried to have
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conversations about things I couldn't talk about and I would collapse. I ended up speaking for the entire night with them. But there were sometimes where I had to twist and turn to make sure things were making sense because I
Speaker A
couldn't actually say things at a certain level. So I want to be clear with you. One of the reasons you're going to lock up is because the model is not robust enough in your brain. part of the sentence is going to enter into this
Speaker A
gap here. And when it does, that's when this is going to happen. You're going to lock up. Okay?
Speaker A
So, not high enough yet. That's all it was. Your just model of the language was not robust enough yet. Was not solid enough yet for you to really use it in the way you wanted to. So, this is why
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week 2 hurts because every session spent below the floor, you will have in six months. If you spend the actual time to get to where you want to go, six months from where you'd like to be, you will be
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there. And it takes some time, but and again, this is depends on how much time you're doing, right? But the point is is it takes time to push your understanding and push your understanding ceiling how much you can understand and then have
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your speaking floor follow along behind it. So I force myself to speak too early. I froze up and burnt out. This happens all the time. So don't speak too early. You should not be speaking from day one. Anything that tells you speak
Speaker A
from day one, it can work, but it will work slowly. The reason why is because even though it feels like you're making progress, you're not actually spending that much time with comprehension. And when you're doing that, you don't even
Speaker A
know when you're making mistakes. And when you don't know if you're making mistakes, your chances of solidifying and calcifying these mistakes in your brain in terms of habits is really high.
Speaker A
Then you have to unlearn a bunch of stuff that your brain just put all this time and energy into automating. So that is going to be a pain.
Speaker A
Keep in mind, a tutor or an AI that never gets tired. They will not get tired. You can hire multiple different tutors and a bunch of different AIs, but below the floor both rehearse the wrong version of you. If you are using if
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you're using AI or tutors or whatever to speak, but you don't have enough of the right comprehension in your brain, enough of the correct version of the language in your brain. You are just practicing the wrong stuff and
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automating the wrong stuff. But you did not waste the money. You just spent it a bit early. Okay?
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Especially if you're doing tutors or paying for expensive, you know, whatever apps, you didn't waste your money. You just probably spent it a little too early, especially if the app is the one that's getting you to speak. So, the
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next piece reveals itself. Why do you freeze even when you understand is you were asked to speak above your ceiling.
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Sometimes that's you asking yourself to speak above your ceiling or whatever service or product or app or whatever is asking you to speak from day one.
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Generally, that's the case. Okay. So, next is when do you start and who decides? With all this information, when do you actually start speaking? When does the door and gate open for you?
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Well, the floor rises with understood hours. Okay, with understood hours. So, that has to come first. Day one, you get hundreds of understood hours. Hundreds of them. I'm sorry to break it to you, okay? You are not going to get fluent in
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seven days. You might be able to sound like it for 2 seconds, but very quickly, it's going to be revealed in your accent or your intonation or your grammar or vocabulary. Something will make it clear that you're not fluent in, you know, 24
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hours or whatever, 3 days, 7 days. It takes time, hundreds of hours, and then you cross this line, you begin to output, and it happens way faster than you realize. Just like Gus talked about where he had day one where he was
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stumbling, and then day three or four where he's now having long conversations because it's all there, and it's just now connecting these little cables. You have this huge machine, right? It's almost like you have this huge backlog of stuff and now it's just connecting
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this one little cable, this one little tube that allows it to slowly flow into the other side and drain into the other side. And now you have this comprehensive system that's working together. Hopefully that analogy kind of lands for you. So, as you know by now,
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the floor climbs the whole way. The unlock is one point on it. Your floor for understanding never stops. You can always get better in English. I'm still trying to get better, right? You could still get better in English. It's never
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going to end. But you at a certain point, you will be able to begin to output because you have a reliable system that will tell you that will tell you I'm speaking correctly or I'm speaking wrong. You have this system in
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your brain that's been automated by you understanding and putting hours into understanding the language that comes first. Then the line happens where you begin to output and then they will both climb into infinity and ride off into the sunset. No, I'm just kidding. But
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really, yes, ours come first, then output unlocks. And that's when you sit at the table, by the way. Should emphasize that.
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Okay. Then there is a point where it is high enough. Once it gets here, it gets high enough and then output can begin.
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Both sides of that line cost you though. miss it either way and you pay.
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Unfortunately, if you're too early, you're going to freeze and it sucks and because the wrong version gets all these reps and these sets that you're putting in, you're training the wrong thing. Or too late is you stall and then the
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family stops waiting. When that happens, h you know, that kind of sucks when it's just like, look, you've stalled, you've been taking all this time and then you're missing out on conversations you could have been a part on, could have
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been a part of. Excuse me. See, still trying to get better at English. You could have been a part of if you didn't stall. if you just took action. Okay, so there is a window and it is narrower
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than it feels inside it. Speaking badly is the plan. So that point is once you get to day 1, day 2, day three of actual output, you're not going to speak as well as you'd like. But when you start,
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and you should start at that point, once you do, that's when things are going to pick up quickly for you. So here's the part that nobody tells you. The week before and the week after feel exactly the same. You cannot feel your own
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ceiling from inside of it. You cannot have this feeling of yes, I'm ready to speak now. I know that I will speak well. I know that I have enough of a robust model of the language in my brain
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like Spencer said I would. Right? You're not going to feel it. Okay? It's a number. It's a amount of time that you put into the language, not a feeling.
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And someone has to call it for you and be like, "Hey, you put in 200 hours or 300 hours, whatever the number is for your language, and basically say, "Hey, your time. It's your time. Now you speak. No more waiting. No more, no more
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hesitating. Now's the time. You've waited long enough. Okay. So, when do you start and who decides? It's a number of hours. It's not a feeling. But once you get that number, the floor under every every sentence unlocks for you.
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You can begin to speak. Okay. And that's what we are going to talk about in the next video. What that number is. Fluency is a date, not a dream. And that date is made up of hours that we compress onto a
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calendar. And then we know when we can speak. Then we speak to a level where we can consider it conversational fluency, which again I admit is this nebulous term really that's kind of hard to put our finger on, which is why I hate all
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of these like systems and grades and whatever that say, oh, this is the level you're at cuz it varies from person to person, daytoday, blah blah blah. So anyway, it's hundreds of hours. And how long is that really? Well, again, that's
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what we're going to talk about in the next video in this series. Is it years away or a number on the calendar? We'll see. That's what we're going to talk about. Okay, hundreds of hours. How are we going to compress this? How are we
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going to do it? That's what we're talking about in the next video. I hope that you're enjoying this series. Again, I'll remind you the purpose of doing this is so that you can either learn a language for yourself to go to a
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country, experience the culture from the inside, or go to your own dinner table where you can experience the culture of your loved ones language from the inside as well. You don't need to be on the outside having things translated for
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you, laughing a second late. And just get the thing that I was chasing and Gus was chasing. And you've seen Chris as well. all these people that you're also going to hear speak to you at the end of
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this series, you're going to get that thing that we're all chasing, okay? And we're going to talk about exactly how long that's going to take you in the next video. So, stick around, stay strong. I hope you're watching this all
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in one go. And uh again, like I always say, so happy to have you here. Happy you're taking language learning seriously. And I'll see you in the next one. Look, you're going to love me or hate me for saying this, but fluency is
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arithmetic. In other words, getting fluent is an equation that we can figure out. And in today's video, we're going to work through that equation so you can get an understanding of when it might happen for you. Now, this is another
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video in the series that we've been working through in terms of getting you to be able to speak with fluency, conversational fluency at the table, meaning you're speaking with a person that you love or someone that you care
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about and you just want to acquire the conversational abilities to communicate in the language. So, today we are talking about how how fluency isn't a dream, it's a date. Let's work through it. Okay? Nobody ever did the arithmetic
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with you, but today we're going to do it so you get an idea of how long this might take you if you're doing the right stuff. Okay, so let's do it. Bring a calendar. You don't actually need to
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bring a calendar. You can just follow along in the video. Okay, cool. So, somebody actually said this to me. Work is killing me. I've only had time to do flashcards. Okay, two years of slow and steady and the table is still a decade
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away. The thing is, things are going to come up in your life. And if you have an idea of how long this process is going to take, you can know where to focus your energy as things come up so that
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you know, hey, I'm still moving forward. And that's very motivating when you know what you're aiming towards and roughly how long it's going to take you. So, the guy who said this to me was not lazy. He was just never given a number. And
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honestly, I can't remember who this was, but it was in a YouTube comment where a lot of you guys comment letting me know what's going on. And the reality is, these are the comments that are inspiring me to make this series and
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make this video. So, here's what we're going to go through today. How many hours does a language actually take? Why does 15 minutes never arrive? Well, meaning when you do 15 minutes for your, you know, Duolingo or whatever it is,
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why does it never actually seem to get anybody fluent? How do you put fluency on a calendar? And what does that date cost you? And then you'll have a day that you can circle. The day that if you're doing the right stuff and you're
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following everything that's in the rest of this series, again, if you have not been watching, go back and start from the beginning. And then you will have a date that you know when you should be able to get to the spot that roughly is
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where you want to be. So, okay, let's start with the price tag. Your language has a price in hours. Different languages have different prices. That's just the reality. The reason why is because different languages are different distances from English. If
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you're learning a Japanese or a Korean, it's going to take you longer than a Portuguese or a Spanish. Okay? So, Italian, we're going to say about 600 hours. Mandarin Korean, we're going to say about 2,200 hours. two languages,
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two prices, and somebody's already counted them. So, you can know how long this is going to take. But there is a caveat. Is are these the actual hours that it's going to take you or not?
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Well, stay tuned. You'll find out. Okay, so classroom hours counted by a government. This is what this is. Okay, there's a couple different organizations that are breaking this down, how long this is going to take. But guess what?
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Understood hours, which is kind of what we've talked about throughout this series. If you don't know specifically what we're talking about, please go back and watch. understood hours can run far shorter. This means it can take you less
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time than it might take you if you're doing the typical classroom, studying with a teacher, studying with a textbook, yada yada. It can go a lot faster than what you're seeing. Okay?
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So, throw out the first answer. It was never it depends. The answer is not it depends. It depends how long it takes.
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No, it doesn't. There's an equation and we can figure this out for you. It's a number and you can look it up. So, answer number one is already unlocked.
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How many hours does a language take? Well, a published number out there says roughly 600 to 2200. It depends on the language that you're going for. But let's understand first now, why does 15 minutes never arrive? If it's 600 hours,
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let's just say, let's say you're doing an Italian, right? Let's say 600 hours. If that's what you're doing, why can't I not just stack up 15 minutes a day until I hit 600? Well, here's why. A small dose never lands. 15 minutes in and most
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of it is gone by tomorrow. See, the level that you're entering in, 15 minutes a day, is just it's just going to always leak out. The reason why is because, again, I'm not going to get deep into neuroscience. I'm not a
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neuroscientist. But the idea is when you go to bed, your brain is consolidating stuff. All the information that it wants to move from short, medium-term memory into long-term memory, which is the place where things get automated and habits are created and all this
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beautiful, wonderful stuff. Okay? When you're doing 15 minutes in, it's basically just never getting above this line where stuff leaks out. And so, forgetting starts to happen. So, this 15 minutes really isn't telling your brain, hey, this is important. Let's
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consolidate this kind of stuff. And it's basically a bucket with a hole. And a bucket with a hole in it means that you're just going to forget as fast or faster than you add. So here's the part that nobody warns you about. The idea
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that slow and steady wins is nonsense. Slow and steady is the quit. This is exactly what's made you quit before. And what's going to get you past it is understanding that you cannot go slow and steady if you really care about
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this. Okay. So months of grinding, doing it right every day, it never gets fun.
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Nothing has clicked. This is the reality. If you think it's months of grinding, again, doing it right every day is what's important. The idea that it never gets fun, this is happening if you're going slow and steady, okay?
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Nothing has clicked yet because you're going slow and steady. Eight years on and off, I hear people saying, "I've been studying eight years on and off." But again, you're at the same level and you're starting over every single time
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you restart, starting from zero because again, it's leaking out of the bucket. And then you stop before anything paid you back. So, when you're doing 15 minutes at a time, you're doing this slow and steady wins the race. Show up
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every day for 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Look, all of these things are going to happen. You put months of grinding, you don't get anything back, and then eventually you just quit because the reality is you weren't really moving
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forward. The best thing that some of these programs and apps and whatever can do for you is they stoke your intrigue and your interest in the language. They can take you from zero to one in that you didn't know what to do with the
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language and then you, you know, download a Dualingo or whatever you're using and now you're interested in the language. That's fantastic. And now let's actually talk about getting conversationally fluent. So the safe pace is the guaranteed quit because all
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of this nonsense. You just it never gets fun. Eight years on and off and then you stop. Okay. So why does 15 minutes never arrive? Is because you add slower than you forget. It's just a simple equation there. Again, like I said at the
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beginning, fluency can be arithmetic. And some of you hate that, some of you love it. But the reality is it's really simple. I'm not a math guy and I'm even comforted by seeing this. Okay. So how do you put fluency on a calendar? How do
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we actually do this now? Well, the fluency date, the piece we've been waiting for here. one division done out loud. Hours needed divided by hours a day. You're going to want to screenshot this. Okay. So, let's say 600 hours.
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You're going for an Italian or a Spanish, let's say. Okay. And again, I'll remind you this can actually go faster if we're doing the correct methods. If we're doing really effective methods, which is the stuff that I talk
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about here on this channel and in this series. So, 600 hours divided by 3 hours a day is going to take you 200 days under seven months. 600 hours divided by 1 hour a day is 600 days. Now we're
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under two years, but 600 hours divided by 15 minutes a day is 2,400 days. 6 and a half years. That's so long. Okay? And it's it's not going to be very motivating. That's And by the way, that's assuming nothing's leaking out of
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the bucket, which it totally is. Same language, same person, different date. Depends on how you want to break this down. Okay? But this is all this is I'd say worst case scenario. Honestly, worst case scenario, if you're doing the right
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methods that are really effective in the right order, and you're avoiding mistakes like we've talked about in earlier parts of the of the series, then you might even go faster, and I've seen it happen. Okay, so where the hours go, frontload it
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while it's still work. Again, you might want to screenshot this early on. Do the hard stuff. Really sprint. Get if you can do two, three hours a day. Not everyone can do it. I get it. But if you
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can take advantage of the seasons of your life where you do get up a little earlier or stay up a little later or use your lunch break to do some immersion um or some of the other things again that
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we talk about on this channel. Sprint early on. Get to a point where native content takes over and then you can coast. Get to a point where you're beginning to understand stuff that's really interesting, the murder mystery or the drama or whatever it is that you
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like because then it's no longer having to grind. It's sitting down at the end of a day and just enjoying watching content that happens to be in your target language. Okay. But if you're doing 15 minutes a day, this just
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happens and you barely there's a tiny incline if if if at all. So the steep part is short. This part is short if you if you really grind it. And then the flat part is free. You race not to the
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point of conversational fluency. Okay, that happens a little further on. But you're racing to the point where the comprehension and you should understand this by now, right? Comprehension comes first and then speaking comes later. So race to the point where the
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comprehension piece is fun. It's not draining from your energy anymore. It's just exciting to watch the next episode.
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Okay, so sprint then coast, not trickle forever. That's the way we want to do it. So, two calendars, two circle days.
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This is what a date looks like and when it lands so you get an idea. This is someone from my community. This was Andre. And here's what he said. Go ahead and read this. But 182 days was me
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sitting with my wife's family, having a meal, conversations for hours. You already saw that in an early version of the series. But Andre was insane. He took this math and compressed it even faster. Okay, he did 61 days. I have
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videos of him on my channel as well, and you're going to see him in this series, so keep watching. But my whole motivation was to propose in Italian in front of her family. And guess what? He did that in her native language. The
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exact reason why you're watching the series. He did it. He proposed to her in front of her Italian family in her native language, Italian. And he did it by compressing again a lot of hours but into 61 days. Okay. And again you're
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going to hear from him later in the series. So so so stick around. No tutor, no classroom, no trip to China. That was for me anyway. 22 hours uh on paper, 182 days in real life. Now the reason I say
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these two numbers is this is what you're you're going to hear online. 2200 hours.
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2200 hours. But for me it wasn't 2200 hours until the point where I was able to speak. The reason why is 2200 hours.
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These numbers that you'll find online are take a couple different things into consideration. One, the idea that you're doing some classroom hours with traditional study where it's not necessarily optimized with the latest understanding of how we acquire languages. And then two is that it's
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assuming a professional level of um I guess being able to carry yourself at a professional level in the language. We are aiming at conversational fluency.
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The ability to speak back and forth, understand someone, and watch native content and enjoy it. That's what we care about. that comes a lot earlier.
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And then over time, just doing those things will carry you to a point where you are going to get better and better or suck less and less, however you want to look at it. Okay? So, neither of us
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waited for years to pass. We put the sprint up front and then I was able to have a great conversation with my wife's family, then girlfriend, now wife, and you guys know how the process kind of rolled out from there. And Andre was
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able to propose in 61 days. Okay. So, how to put fluency on a calendar is just you divide and then you circle the day.
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You divide, then you circle the day. It's that simple. So, what does the date cost you? Well, now for the honest part.
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A date means a sprint. If you have a date, that means you can't just be going slowly forever. It means a sprint. You have to take it seriously and really push. So, hours a day, the right hours, four months. Now, it doesn't have to be
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100 months. It can be, in Andre's case, 2 months. It can be five months, six months, seven months, 12 months, and then you're at this amazing point in the language. And anyone that was telling you it was going to happen in 5 days or
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7 days, right, by the end of the week. Anyone who's saying this is frankly wrong. I mean, I have yet to see it. It doesn't really happen. Maybe it maybe it can happen. I've never seen it. Okay?
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And if you are if you are upset by how long this is going to take, sorry, I'm switching back and forth screens a lot.
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If you're upset by how long this is going to take, the reality is it was always going to take this long. It's just that you were indoctrinated or brainwashed or just misled into thinking it could be sooner. The reality is if
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you're like, "Oh, there's a program over here that promises 10 days." Look, it may promise that, but the reality, it was always going to take the time it was going to take, and I'm just trying to be as honest as possible with that. Even
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some people say that what I'm saying is too fast, but we have all these students that are doing it, so I don't know what you want from me. Anyway, that is what a circle day costs, a real sprint. So,
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have you ever done a sustained one? An actual real sprint. Have you ever tried it for real? But I don't mean 30 minutes a day, an hour a day. I mean a couple of hours a day of the right stuff, okay?
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Alone. Just answer this honestly. You don't have to tell me. Just tell yourself, have you actually done this?
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Have you tried a real sprint? Have you? Okay. Well, every attempt so far, every time you did it alone. That's also a downside. Now you're learning a language for someone that you love or hopefully there's people around you that are
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supporting you and that's really powerful. Nobody knew whether you studied this week. Nobody noticed when you stopped. But now, now hopefully you're doing it where with someone where or for someone who you can tell and they can hold you accountable because nobody
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finishes a sprint unwatched. It's fun at the first few days and then it's grueling. It's hard. You got to wake up early. You make real sacrifices. That's the truth of the matter. So, you've stood here before and that's the spot.
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It's week five. We talked about this, right? Week five where you're like, "Okay, we talked about this early. Go back and watch it if you want to see." It's earlier in the series where we talk about this. This week five when people
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quit. We go up this thing, we're excited, and then we hit week five and you could have gone here where you kept going to a point where you coast, but you stopped and you fell off. And every attempt dies where felt progress stops.
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When you no longer feel like you're making progress, which around week five, that's when people quit like I keep saying, and we need to get past that point. Every attempt you've had died right there, like we spoke like we spoke
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about. So, one thing they had, the ones who did it didn't have more willpower.
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I've talked about this before. The hours were pre-chosen. They knew when and where and how, which is what we are building towards as we approach the final pieces of the series. Someone watching the calendar. That's what's important here. So, all four are now
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unlocked. Take a screenshot of this so you understand. And now you should have a day that you can circle or at least we're getting close to that understanding. So, that's going to wrap up this video. The next video is going
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to be that fluent doesn't mean what you think it means. We're going to break this down so that you can actually have an idea of what it means to be fluent.
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So we know what we're aiming at so that we know when we get there what it's supposed to be and how it's supposed to feel. Okay. So what are you actually aiming at? Let's be super clear. So every single time you look at a product
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or a service, you're like, "Okay, it promises fluency. What does that even mean?" Okay? It changes everything about the date. It'll change everything about what we just talked about for the better. But you need this context to fully move forward. So I hope you're
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enjoying this series. Again, power through. We're almost at the end. This is going to give you more of an educa. I can ask 99 people what they want out of fluency and 99 of them will tell me, you
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know what, I just want to be able to belong at a table. I want to be able to speak the language of the people I love.
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I want to be able to connect with people through a language and I want to belong at the table where I'm not outside of the conversation with things needed to be translated for me every time. I want to belong. Now, if I add one extra
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person and ask a hundredth person and say, "Hey, what do you want fluency for?" They might say, "Oh, to pass this specific test or to work for a job at the government." Like we've joked about in the rest of this series. Today, we
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are going to have a discussion about what fluency actually means so that we can take the hours that you are putting into the time or the hours that you're putting into the the pursuit of fluency and actually calibrate them perfectly so
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you know when you're getting there, what it's going to feel like, and exactly what you should deserve to feel once you arrive. So, fluency doesn't mean what you think it means. And going forward whenever you are promised fluency from
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any program now you are going to be able to understand what it should look like if you actually get there successfully.
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Okay. So doesn't mean what you think it means. Ask what it means. You say a level. Ask why. You say a table. Right?
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That's what you care about. Belonging at the table. So there is a test and it has no score. This is not a score like you were at school. It's not like that. This is completely different. So start where
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it actually mattered. Nobody ever cried at a certificate. They cried at a dinner. They finally understood. And I've actually had this happen. I've had students that have told me about times, again, we talked about Andre in the last u lesson in the
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series. If you haven't watched it, go back and watch it. Where he proposed to his now wife in her mother tongue after studying using the right methods for 61 days. That is the kind of thing that people cry at. Not at, oh goodness, I'm
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finally C1. Right? It doesn't happen. So the score was never the thing you wanted. What you care about is actual conversational fluency. And we're going to go into that today. So, what does fluent actually mean? Does this work for
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people like you, the person watching this right now, you? Does this actually work? And what's between you and finally being at that table where you can just enjoy the evening, drinking your beer, eating your cheeseburger, whatever it is, and you're speaking with your
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boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, or wife, and their entire family as someone part of the family, not someone on the outside with this awkward translation gap. That's what we're going to cover today. Here is how you were told to measure it. That A level, a test score,
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an accent, a compliment, but none of this is actually really what we care about, right? We don't care what chat GPT says. We don't really care about the test score again, unless you're working at the government. Um, an accent or a
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compliment. I mean, maybe the compliment feels good, but what we care about is something a little bit different. Every one of them measures you alone. But what about the table test? being at the actual table. Three questions and no
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score anywhere, but three questions. Okay? Can you say what you mean? Your actual piece, exactly what you mean, not a script. You can communicate the ideas in your head. You can tell a joke. You can tell the awkward story of the time
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you walked in on Uncle Tommy in the bathroom. Okay? Follow what's said. Can you follow what people are saying at the table? Not just your loved one, but the actual family at their speed, not yours.
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They're not adjusting for you cuz that's exhausting. You're able to adjust to them. And can you get through a day without bracing for it? You're not like, "Oh god, I don't understand anything people are saying." You don't have to do
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that because you actually do now. You belong at the table. Those are the three questions we care about. Okay? Because nobody is 43% at a table. Nobody is there and like, you know what, I'm 43% part of the conversation. No, either
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you're there on the inside or you're on the outside. And I'm speaking from experience, not just with my students, but from me, too. This is why I learned Mandarin. This is why. So, whoever your table is, this could be a partner's
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family, a friend, a colleague, this could be a city, this could be go to a new city and speak the language. Any conversation that matters is this table.
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Any conversation that matters. You might want to get lost in Japan and go to a bar or an idakaya and have a night laughing, drinking saporro and eating kurag, and you want to do it in Japanese. Yes, that is your table. Okay,
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so the first time it happened to me, I spoke Mandarin in front of her parents.
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This was the best feeling ever. And again, you probably know this by now, but this is myself and my wife. Um, people I had never really talked to before. Not like this. Jokes, smiles, nods, but not like this. Not like I
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really knew them. And you've seen that video. And they froze. You saw my my father-in-law literally froze and point at me and pointed at me. Okay, that paid for every hour. That moment and the relationship that I I forged going
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forward was so worth it for all the time that I put in and for how remarkably quickly that it happened. It was so worth it. and it will happen for you too. So what does fluent actually mean?
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It's the table. It's not the test. It's can you belong at the table? No matter what the table is for you. Okay. Next is does this work for people like you? For you watching this video right now. Does
Speaker A
it work? Well, four tables, four languages. We had Andre in Italian, which was 61 days, and then he proposed.
Speaker A
He proposed in a language he didn't speak 61 days before. And guess what? She said yes, obviously. Okay, we have Gus 4 hours at her at at his or her family, his girlfriend's family's dinner table with no English. We have Chris,
Speaker A
this was his last shot and then he used Mandarin in Beijing. Then we have Oscar and Katarina who learned German. I didn't really tell much about them in this series, but I believe I I speak about them here um in the next video in
Speaker A
the series, but the farmer who doesn't speak English for two hours, they were there interacting with a guy in in in I believe it was Germany or maybe it was Switzerland, but he didn't speak English. He only spoke German. That was
Speaker A
the language that Oscar and Katarina as a couple are acquiring. And they were just part of the conversation for 2 hours. Okay? So, not one of them sat a test. Not one of these people you heard about, not one of them went to some sort
Speaker A
of test that judged their abilities, but they belonged at their individual tables, which is what most people, the 99 people, 99% of people care about.
Speaker A
So, Etszio Auditori, um, again, this is actually Andre. The reason why he wrote his name like this from Assassin's Creed was because I'm not going to get into the story right now, but he was hiding his identity from his girlfriend so she
Speaker A
wouldn't find out he was part of Fluency Formula because surprise, she was also part of one of the communities and he didn't want to see um he didn't want her to see him in it. So, again, he basically is saying that we're not
Speaker A
giving the system enough credit. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. But the point is he put in the work. That's what's important. Okay. Then we had Gus who again talked about his his his days.
Speaker A
Four hours. Four hours he was having conversations for after his third day of outputting. It might sound crazy but this can happen if you do it correctly.
Speaker A
Are you speaking perfectly? No. But are you able to get your ideas across? Yes.
Speaker A
Okay. So look at who those people are. They had jobs. They had kids. They had to commute. They had no spare time. So that's the same as you. You have all these things. I know you do. Okay. Not
Speaker A
one polyglot on that wall. Not one person that's like, I'm this crazy language learning beast. No, normal people with normal lives. Okay? They were never language people. They just had a plan. I want to repeat that. They were not people with a language gene
Speaker A
that were specifically predisposed to language. They just had a plan and they did it. And it's everything you've that you've been learning in this series.
Speaker A
Okay. So, does this work for people like you? Yes. Ordinary people, not language people. And if you are a language person with a ton of time for whatever reason, then awesome. This will work even better for you. So congratulations. I'm happy
Speaker A
for you. So what's between you and that table? Okay, you already have the method. You went we went through this series together. We talked about the scoreboard, the quit point, the window, the floor, the date, and the how is now
Speaker A
just kind of where we're a little bit dark and we're going to cover that. Five answers are lit and there's one box that's still dark. And this unlocks your path forward to conversational fluency.
Speaker A
Okay, five answers. None of them says what to do tomorrow. Well, because you're probably watching this like, "This is all great. What do I do next?
Speaker A
Okay, another year on the old board is another year of the same dinner. The dinner where you're on the outside and you can't connect with the people that you want to connect with. And again, that table in your case can be, like I
Speaker A
said, getting lost in Japan drunk on asah or saporro, uh, eating your kurag and just speaking Japanese to the amazing, you know, old Japanese guy beside you who wants to share his life story. That might be what it is for you.
Speaker A
Same chair, same silence, same translation. It sucks. That date moves every year. You do not set it. And we need to set it in stone so we can get it there. We can get to where we want to
Speaker A
go. Now, open the dark box. You have the method, not the how. Right? So, the order. What do I actually do each day?
Speaker A
What's in your window? Right? Like we talked about earlier. Um, your level, not theirs.
Speaker A
Who calls the unlock? What day do you actually speak? When do you actually start doing this? Who watches the calendar? So, the date actually holds for you. You actually have a date that doesn't shift around. you can actually
Speaker A
get to where you want to go and anyone in it with you. Nobody finishes this alone. Nobody does this when they're just sitting in a dark room by themselves. Even me. Again, this is why I broke so early and my wife ended up
Speaker A
finding out halfway through my Chinese experiment that I was learning. You may have heard the story before, but I'll tell it in in another video if you want to hear it. So, you know why, but you still can't circle the day. And we need
Speaker A
to fix that. So, let's talk about the how. what's between you and the dinner table or dinner table any table really the order the dayby day and the people and then you have a seat at the table so we
Speaker A
are about to approach the final video in this series so want to see what this gets you the next video opens the I'm just going to let you know what happens when you start the next video which is
Speaker A
the last one in this series that video is going to open with real Mandarin native speakers hearing me speak Mandarin okay and you're going to see for the first couple of minutes just to show you the reactions of the level that
Speaker A
you can get to when you apply the right things in the right order. Then you'll see the whole map of exactly what to do.
Speaker A
If you're if now you've gone through the whole series, you've seen all of this and you're going to see exactly what to do day by day. So you now have no more questions. Okay? Then you're going to see it start to finish and an X-ray of
Speaker A
what keeps you stuck. Inside of this video, there is going to be points where I need you to specifically assess yourself. I'm going to ask you red, yellow, green. And depending on how you're doing, you need to give yourself
Speaker A
a grade because at the end based on the red red, yellow, green, you're going to need to know or you're going to know exactly what you need to do to get to conversational fluency. We've now avoided so many things that 99% of
Speaker A
people run into through this series. And the last video of this series is going to give you the final piece. Okay? So, it is called the fluency road map. I need you to watch it to the end. And
Speaker A
that is next. I'm just going to get my face out of the way. There you go. You can see it. The point is is the fluency road map is now going to take everything you've learned, put it into one area
Speaker A
that allows you to move forward in the right direction. We've got rid of all the stuff that would have held you back and now we're going to now we're going to pour gasoline on the fire so that we
Speaker A
can move you forward as quickly as possible. If you want the most value out of this, I need you to finish it in one sitting. Don't start it and stop it and start it and stop it. watch it in one
Speaker A
sitting so you can have it all in your brain fresh and take action because that's the way you're really going to acquire a language no matter what method you use. If you don't adhere to it, you're not going to make progress. Okay,
Speaker A
so that will bring us close to the end of the series. You are have you have one more video left in the series. I highly recommend that you continue and you push through and you watch it. It's been my
Speaker A
absolute pleasure having you here so far. I look forward to seeing you start the next video and seeing the reactions of when I'm actually speaking Mandarin with native speakers. So, thank you so much for watching. Finish strong and I
Speaker A
will see you in the final video of the series.
Topics:language learningfluency formulaconversational fluencylearn any languagelanguage study tipsMandarin learninglanguage immersionefficient language learningspeaking skillslistening skills











