The 2 things you need to learn English (whatever your age)

I believe it's possible to learn a second or third language whatever your age but you need two things let's talk

about [Music]

it hello it's Keith from the Keith speaking Academy now you know I was rubbish at French at school bonjour come

on T Vu and actually I loved it and when I wanted to do French at a level my teachers said Keith don't do it right

they they said I wasn't good enough now the thing is at that time I had one of the things I needed to learn French but I was missing the second and I only

discovered it some years later over the years I've learned French and Spanish and Chinese um up to a good level at least good enough for me and that's

important and here's another important thing right I believe there are two things you need to learn a language successfully number one

motivation that drive maybe that passion to do something you need a reason whether it's you know to pass an exam to speak to family and friends or to go

traveling that reason and that motivation is key if you don't have it you'll stop because despite what Tik Tok

says you will not be fluent in a week or a month right it takes time and patience and you need to study and practice so

that motivation and keeping that motivation is really important number two is a study method that works for you

now again social media has probably convinced you there is a secret method a secret way to learn and be fluent in

English it's not true it's not there are only ways that work for you what works for me may not work for

you okay so yes we need to follow good practices based on research and Theory we know but then you need to find a way

that works for you that's so important with that said I'd like to share with you in this video the key step and methods that I have used to learn

French and Spanish and Chinese over the years so that maybe you can try them and see what works for you choose the method that works for you let's do

it right let's talk about French so I learned French initially at school as you remember um and I I had the motivation but I was missing the study

method that worked for me it was all grammar translation and I just it didn't work for me so I had to find other ways later I went to University and studied

French and there we had a year in France and then I also found other ways to study and practice that really worked at school one of the key things that I

learned and I can't remember who told me was the cover guess and check method so cover guess and check the teacher right gives you a word list yeah word lists

and you have to go home and just memorize 20 words right so I didn't do homework at home I did it on the bus

going home or going to school get the list of words get my bus pass and you've had the the French and the English cover

the French so you cover you guess and you check so it says chair and I go Oh in French

La check oh no LZ okay repeat again chair lashes

good Table La La laa oh yes laa and then that's it so cover guess and check and that was great it worked for me even better was sometimes on the bus I was

with a classmate so if I was with a classmate we would test each other the same thing more or less right how do you say chair lashes oh yes and

there's something about interacting with another person that makes it memorable there's something sometimes you say

funny things L table L and it just sticks so that interaction with another person is a really good way for me to

learn words later when I went to University I discovered drama and I joined the French drama club um and we

did uh I remember we did a la by molier and doing drama was fantastic because what you have to do is you have to memorize your script you

have to repeat your words or phrases 20 30 40 times and so that memorization and saying it correctly was important you have to go on stage and

you have to project your voice to make it loud so you're really pronouncing clearly um and the teacher would check and give you feedback again that

interaction with other people it just becomes so memorable that the grammar and vocabulary embedded in the script

sticks stuck with me for years and years great method one of the things the teacher did the French teacher was he gave me a cassette so in those days we

had cassettes he'd recorded the key pronunciation things that I didn't have

right things like a is is I right J and so he'd record all of those and I would just go away and listen and listen and repeat and listen and repeat again that

kind of working out control repetition worked really well years later when I started working um I wanted to to carry on with my French and so one thing I did

is I joined a a monthly magazine basically like nowadays you have monthly memberships uh it was a monly magazine I subscribed to and it

was great once a month I'd get the magazine in the post with a little audio CD and you'd listen to the the story you could look at the vocabulary there'd be interviews and quizzes and for a few

days I was just immersed in French and I used to look forward to getting the magazine so much it's so exciting that that helped me keep my

motivation even now as I'm much older and I'm living in Spain I subscribed to a a French Community where there are classes and that motivates me and just by speaking to other people you you get

ideas and they talked about well why don't you read a novel and so now this year I've read a novel in French which I've not done for years and I'm so happy

about it and so having that contact with French contact with other people again I think that really works for me as well

anyway that has been my French Journey so let me talk now about Spanish and learning Spanish so actually when I left University learned French I went to live

in America for a year I worked in a restaurant um it was like a gap year but in the restaurant I met a lot of South American people and it gave me a taste

for Spanish I learned some basic words hola things like that and when I came back home I thought right I want to learn Spanish why not take another Gap

year go and work in Spain teach English and learn Spanish so I did in my early 20s I went to Spain and I started learning Spanish and I think because I'd

learned French it was easier um but yeah within a couple of within a couple of years I felt I was pretty fluent in Spanish some of the techniques I used

one of them and I I think I've mentioned this some in some other videos is juggling and juggling is this right

whoa now when you when you juggle the the ball represents the word or the phrase you've learned so let's imagine in English you've learned the expression

to be over the moon meaning to be happy right now you could say to be over the moon to be over the moon to be over the moon you could just repeat it but you

could also juggle change it around I was over the moon I will be over the moon I would be over the moon changing the tense and then make it even more

complic complicated I will be over the moon if I pass my exam and so you're juggling I will be over the moon if I pass my exam

I would be over the moon if I won the lottery and you're juggling this phrase different tenses and look at the

practice look how that is much more it's much deeper and richer than to be over the moon to be over the moon which is a bit boring right so juggling something I

discovered really worked for me that's for later now another thing I did and I still do in Spanish particularly is read I I read

voraciously nice word right veraciously avidly a lot and I still do right I mean Isabella jendi the classics Camino upto-date

stuff right on Prime video I mean it's motivating and interesting and I think reading widely is really important I

mean also newspapers blogs not just your course book if you're limited to your coursebook it's not enough basically and

the way I read is is with a sense of curiosity so most of the time I'm reading for fun to enjoy it but I do notice things and it's so important I

remember chatting to Steve calman about this and the idea that when you notice language is when you learn just have a sense of curiosity you know like oh

that's interesting in Spanish they use the future tense where in English I probably use the present here and just being curious about things and

checking dictionaries or course books um chat gbt if you like and that sense of curiosity

noticing grammar verbs tenses really really powerful and generally reading wow it's the it's the big GameChanger I think for language learning is when you

expand your reading the final thing I remember I did in Spanish was I I used to make an audio diary um at the end of the day especially the first few months

when I was studying and I would record on a cassette B press record and just go through not what I did in that day but the words I'd learned that day right so

today I'd learn this word this word this expression I just repeat them um i' so I'd mix English and Spanish today I learned Lisa today I also

learn you know and just saying out the words and kind of summarizing what I'd learned in a short five minute audio at the time I

didn't know why it it worked but I think it's to do with that you know when you learn stuff within 24 hours you forget 80% and it's so important to review

before that 24 hours is up so I was doing that just for five minutes and recording it so it was also audio like multimedia um I didn't realize it was

actually a research backed method it just it just felt right it was dead easy to do um so that kind of audio diary nowadays you could do a video diary just any kind of review at the end of

the day I think really really helps so yeah that was my Spanish Learning Journey and still is let's move on okay when it comes to Chinese I

actually learned I began learning Chinese I began studying Chinese um in Spain du why interesting story I was

about 33 32 33 so you know no spring chicken walking down the street and I W went past a shop and there was this beautiful Chinese calligraphy like the

writing the painting in the shop and I went inside and uh I saw the guy there said this is beautiful and uh he said yes I teach people how to do Chinese

calligraphy how to paint I said wo and how much how much are the classes and you know he looked at me up and down and then said

yeah a thousand batas in those days it was before the euro but I think the price changed on depending on the student anyway I began and I started

learning the calligraphy and what the words meant very very basic it was more about painting rather than learning Chinese but then what I did is I well I

decided at some point to relocate and go and live in China and learn Chinese I was going to be a director of studies of a school got a job and then I got a hold

of a book and a cassette I can't remember if it was rootage or burlett like Rosetta Stone one of these beginner Chinese books I put the book away and I

listened to the cassette every day for a month and I just listened and listened I didn't understand anything but every day

I listened and I listened and then it was time to go to China and I arrived in China and then in China I took out the book and started to look at the

conversations and the words and the translation and began to understand but the big difference was compared to some friends who were also English in China

they were starting to learn from reading the pinin and I already made the connection of the sound so for example when you

look at a phrase written um to say I am happy in Chinese my friends were going okay uh whoo hen

how sing and I was goinging because I could make the connection with what I'd been listening

to and what these words were and I remember at the time people said wow your pronunciation is really good I said well but I've only been learning for

month but it had such an impact um and I I thought it was really important for me it was because Chinese is a difficult language to pronounce so I put that emphasis on pronunciation the other

thing I did is I spent a lot of time on tones right you'll know in Chinese there are tones there's the flat ma ma ma ma

there are different tones I don't say them perfectly but I spent quite a bit of time listening to tones and working out how to use them again that made a big difference because most English

people speaking Chinese forget about the tones W everything's dum dum dum dum right and it's just I think it's important for

that language in particular so for me focusing on learning to speak from listening rather than learning to speak from Reading was a game Cher really important

and worked for me the other thing I did is is around immersion and when I first arrived in China for the first nine months I did intensive lessons every day

2 hours in the morning before work uh and basically I just knew that I I had to immerse myself in the language and have that drive that motivation right that

every day there's a class and every day you're going at it it is a marathon and I did that for eight months and it helped and I built up slowly My Level there's a feeling of success and getting

better which motivates you again and then as you start to use it in the street and you notice you can communicate wow what a great feeling so

that kind of immersion and intense study I chose eight months I mean you could choose three months or four weeks that

deciding and committing to that time to do it right the other Curious Thing and an interesting thing that I discovered learning Chinese is that I learned

better listening to nonnative Chinese speakers than to Native Chinese speakers so when I used to listen to the TV and the radio Chinese speakers I found very

difficult but then suddenly at that time we had YouTube and then I started listening to broadcasts of the laai the foreigners like American and British people who

spoke very very good Chinese and I could understand them I thought wow and I would listen to these interviews they were speaking very good Chinese I could learn a lot but it was easier to

understand an English person speaking Chinese than a Chinese person so again in the early days I did a lot of that um of course you need to balance that with

also listening to native speakers you need both but that really helped me and built my confidence because I thought oh actually I can understand him I know

he's from Manchester but you know I can understand is Chinese so those are a few Snippets of my Chinese Learning Journey so there I hope this has been

interesting for you and maybe giving you a few ideas of different methods and ways you can practice and try um I am

curious which method have you used or would you like to try let me know in the comments do remember as I said I think there are two things you need right you

need motivation and you need a study method that works for you to be clear right there is no best study method right anybody who tells you there is is

lying there's only the best method for you and probably you're going to use different methods not just one right the important thing is you start experimenting and trying and finding the

things that do work for you action point is thinking about this video take one method you've not tried

tried have a go and see what happens now you may remember at the start of the video I said you can learn a second language whatever your

age and it's true right I learned French at school I Spanish when I was 22 I learn um Chinese when I was about 33 now I'm 57 and I'm still learning new

phrases and words and I'm still practicing as well yes it's easier to learn a language when you're younger

okay that's true but age is not a barrier it's not a barrier to learning or more importantly to practicing and enjoying the language so whatever you're

learning whatever your age keep going CU it's worth it and you really will reap the rewards today and as you get older so that's it for today thank you so much

for watching if you've likeed this give me a like just subscribe to the channel to see more videos coming up and I will see you maybe in the next video take

care bye-bye [Music]