Lesson Transcript

Welcome to INNER CIRCLE!
Hi, Peter.
Hi, Kyejin.
Um, so...
Do you remember what we talked about last time?
Last week or last time we were talking about our learning routines.
Exactly, how to get back into our learning routine.
And this time, what would you like to talk about today?
I think today we're going to talk about speaking more of your target language.
Hmm, interesting. Okay.
So I think why don't we talk about all the best ways to speak or practice your target language.
And when we say practice, practice speaking your target language.
Of course, it sounds very interesting.
So I'm sure you have many, many, many tactics, right?
I think we both do, Kyejin.
Yeah, we already talked about a few of them already.
Yeah, I think today I've probably studied 12 or 13 languages.
How about yourself, Kyejin?
What? 12 and 13 languages?
Studied, like past, right?
You can study them and learn them and then forget them.
Yeah, it was two.
I think I studied English, Japanese, French, Malaysian.
Wow.
A little, a little before.
Yeah, so maybe four languages.
But your own language too?
Yeah.
Technically?
Yeah, I guess I learned at school too.
Yeah.
Maybe four, five.
Yeah, there's such a difference between like just learning through being in the environment and actually trying to learn the language.
Yeah, totally agreed.
So yeah, it's interesting.
So today we're going to talk about this.
And I think one challenge we'd like to give to everyone is that of the techniques we talk about,
I think everyone should pick at least one.
Yeah, I agree.
And what should they do with that?
Yep.
Well, they should try and test it out, right?
Applied linguistics.
Yes.
And the tactics that we tried are not so difficult.
So anyone who is watching this video can do that for sure.
Okay.
So first, why would we talk about speaking?
Like why, why do you think we want to talk about speaking?
I think it depends.
But for most of people, the ultimate goal of learning a language is to speak with native speakers
or mostly speaking.
Yeah.
We had a survey a few times throughout a company's history and by far always number one, people want to speak.
And I think I saw the same survey before.
And wasn't it the speaking is a part where people are most struggling with?
Yeah.
So they often say it's their weakest skill.
I'm not sure the data is so fair because I think people are judging themselves.
Yeah, they could be humble.
Yeah, not give themselves enough credit.
It's kind of like people who go to the gym.
It's like, I'm not in that good shape.
It's like, you look at yourself, you're like, you're in pretty good shape.
So, but maybe if they're not as good as they want to be.
So there is that desire to get better.
And so that's a very key point.
So and I think for many people, they're probably better than they think they are.
Yeah.
So that component to it too.
Yeah.
And also, you know, I taught Korean to many students.
And one thing that I noticed is that my students often say, I'm not good at speaking.
I'm scared of speaking Korean.
And I asked them, so you said speaking is the weakest part.
And how much time do you spend on speaking?
Or I mean, practicing speaking.
And they said, oh, maybe like, I don't know, less than 10% of their time.
So they spend a lot of time listening, reading, learning vocabulary, grammar.
But they don't actually practice speaking.
And they are not happy that they are not good at speaking.
It's a great point, Kyejin.
I think it comes down to the fact, one word, opportunity, right?
Yeah. So I think in today's video, we can introduce some tactics that people can use to practice speaking.
Yeah. And kind of create more opportunities.
Because you need to practice to do well in your opportunities, right?
Yeah.
Okay. So, Kyejin, shall we jump into this list?
Sure. Actually, I have my favorite tactic.
Okay. Shall we start? Tactic number one.
Tactic number one, reading out loud.
So do you try this? By the way, what is this tactic?
So this is a tactic where you have text in the target language.
And as you're reading it, you open up your mouth and you read along.
Yes. And I love it based on my personal experience.
I learned French, and somehow when I started learning French, I was the worst student when I read the text.
So I practiced a lot at home for a few months.
And after a few months later, I was the best student reading the French text in the class.
So this became my favorite method.
That's a very powerful one. Super powerful.
But you know what is a little hard about it is you have to be very diligent.
You have to keep reading out loud.
Yes.
Have you ever read with young children, Kyejin?
Oh, no.
So when you read with kids, they often will start to read out loud.
But after a little bit, their finger just moves along and they're not reading out loud.
So you have to constantly prompt them to read out loud. I see.
So it seems that you have to be very consistent and diligent to keep reading out loud, which is not so easy if you're doing it for 10 or 20 minutes.
That's very true. So how did you do it?
Well, I didn't read long sentences in many, many minutes a day.
I just tried to focus on the text that I learned on that day.
And usually as a beginner, it's not like 10 to 20 sentences.
It's more like five sentences.
And I could read five sentences and I read them many, many times repeatedly.
So it wasn't that hard.
But if I imagine reading the whole book or long sentences, like maybe like 100 sentences, I'm sure I'll become quiet after 10 minutes.
Yeah. I remember when I started, I used this tactic too.
And when I started studying, there was a tape recorder.
Right. So you had to rewind.
But with technology, this is actually a powerful and easy to use technique on our site.
You can use the line by line so you can practice reading, hit the play button, listen to it.
And our sites have a lot of nice sentences.
When I listen to a song, you can now see the lyrics.
This is very powerful.
Yeah, it is.
And also one good thing about our site is the dialogues are based on the level.
So sometimes when I read random sentences from newspaper, I understand single words.
I understand no words.
But on our website, the sentences are good for each level.
So it's very helpful.
Plus, you can choose many different dialogues.
So it's not long. It's not so exhausting.
Maybe you can try just one or two.
So it's great practice.
There are many, many powerful tools for free and also paid that you can use to really get the most out of this tactic.
I mean, there's closed captions on Netflix now, there's subtitles.
There are so many different things that allow you to listen along while you view.
But it's that speaking, that producing, that productive part that's hard.
Because when you put on Netflix, it's often like you start saying it and by like the fourth exchange, you're just watching and listening.
Yeah, you forgot reading it.
So I love this one, but it does take work.
Yeah, indeed.
So we also have tactic two.
Tactic two.
Yes, speeding up your reading out loud.
Have you tried it?
This I have not tried.
Actually, I didn't intend to speed up my reading.
But if I read the same sentences over and over again, I naturally read faster.
So yeah, probably you also experienced that.
So for this one, it makes sense, right?
Like you learn it slow and then you speed up.
So for this one, though, are we listening faster or we're speaking fast?
Speaking fast.
And it's also a good practice for your tongue muscle.
When you learn a new language, I don't think you have the tongue muscle for that language yet.
For example, I don't know how to pronounce R or L in Korean, because I mean, in Korean, we don't have that sound.
So when I learned English, I had to practice a lot.
R, L, R, L. Those are the same sounds in Korean.
So yeah, when you practice reading and also speeding up, that also trains your muscle.
True.
Makes sense.
And sometimes when I listen to some lyrics, I'll pronounce it slowly at first, right?
Training the muscle.
And then you say it faster and faster.
Yeah.
So when you learn a new language, I strongly recommend you try this.
Help me out here, though, since I've never used this tactic.
So I've done it in small bursts, meaning if there's a sentence I can't say, well, I'm reading out loud and I struggle with it.
Even in your own language, right?
You kind of struggle with words and then you get the proper sounds and you say it faster.
So I've done it with one or two words.
But have you done it with a passage or a few sentences?
How do you carve out time to study with this?
Yeah.
As I mentioned, I didn't read out fast intentionally.
It just happens naturally.
But for me, I didn't read out the whole sentence, I mean, whole paragraph, but mostly the sentences.
So until I say this sentence like native speakers, I keep reading it.
Got it.
Yeah.
OK. So this is a tactic that goes inside of the first tactic.
Yes.
Very similar.
OK.
So shall we move on to the next tactic?
Let's move on.
OK.
That's shadowing that we talked about a few months ago.
Yeah, this is hearing and repeating what you've heard.
And so some people may listen and repeat back.
But I believe in this case, you want to try and speak along as closely as possible, right?
Right.
So basically how you apply it is you listen to the lessons and then try and repeat the dialogues as you hear it.
Yep, exactly.
And I use this shadowing tactic a lot on our website because on our website we have line by line audio.
So it's very easy to try the shadow.
And I sometimes do shadowing myself and send it to my teacher or my teacher messenger app.
And the teacher corrected me or he also sent me the correct pronunciation himself.
He also recorded.
So it's actually very interesting.
Yeah.
So this is a very good tactic for our site or the app.
A lot of the tools here allow for this.
And you can even get the feedback by then sending it to your teacher.
Yep.
So if we just play a little hypothetical, you can find the dialogue, practice reading it, speed up the parts you can't get.
Then, well, so for example, you're at home, you open your computer, read along with the dialogue, speed up the fast parts.
When you don't understand, play it back, listen, speed up, but read out loud.
Then you're commuting to work, you're listening along in the car or on the train.
You hear it and then you're speaking it out loud.
That's very good.
We can all combine these tactics.
Yes, combine them all.
And you know what?
I think we can combine one more tactic.
The next tactic.
Okay.
Recording yourself.
What do you think?
Do you think it's helpful?
This is super helpful.
Yeah.
But it comes with a catch.
Do you know what that catch is?
You have to listen back.
Yes.
When I recorded myself and listened back, I had a very hard time.
Why is it so hard to listen to my own voice and pronunciation?
Even in your own native language, it's very weird.
Yeah.
I remember the first time I heard my voice.
I did not like it.
I was like, who's that talking?
Yeah, same.
For me, out of all the techniques, this is still my favorite.
To record yourself, listen back, gives you a real honest benchmark of where you are in your learning.
Yeah.
And you can also compare with native speakers' pronunciation.
Yeah.
And public speakers do this all the time.
I mean, you have to practice again and again.
There's tone, there's timing.
It's very important.
Yeah, indeed.
I have a question.
Yes.
So when you record yourself, do you record video or audio only?
So I started this technique again with a tape recorder recording myself.
I would read the sentence first, and it goes back to what you were saying.
I was reading out loud, but I wrote the passage.
So I'd write something down, maybe four lines about a paragraph.
I'd write the paragraph out, like, hi, my name is Peter.
I'm from the US.
And then I'd translate it to the language, translate it, and then write it in Japanese.
Then I would record it.
And this, as hard as it was back then, 30 years ago, it still was, it still was much better than listening back.
So writing it, recording it, that was easy.
Listening back, that was tough.
But then I realized I have a lot of work to do.
Then I would get someone to record it the proper way.
Then I would shadow them, practice again and again.
And then I'd record myself, and I'd compare the original one to the current one.
Yeah, that was, you know, when looking back, that took days to do.
Now you have so many different tools to help you that you can be so quick about this.
Yeah, everyone has a smartphone these days, so you can record yourself or even video recording too.
So you video record?
I did it a few times, and I noticed something.
When I pronounced some French words, I didn't know I'd make that shape of my mouth.
So when I recorded it, I realized, oh, shape of my mouth is a little different from native speakers
when they pronounce a certain letter, like ju.
So I practiced, and I'm still not like native, but I improved a lot in my opinion.
So that's very interesting.
How you pronounce words, and also how you do hand gestures when you speak the language.
Body language?
Body language, yes.
Yeah, I can see that.
Wow, Kyejin, this is quite an advanced tactic, though.
This is refining.
It's almost like singers when they look at their expressions of what faces they make when they're singing different notes.
That's super good.
So I've never tried that, but I will try it.
And please let me or let us know how it went.
I don't think so.
Keep it secret.
You don't have to share the video, but I just want to know what other people think about video recording of themselves when they speak another language.
You know, and YouTube has a lot of great content out there where people focus just on the mouth, so you can really probably improve your pronunciation.
I like the profile shots where they have the side of the mouth so you can see where the tongue is.
Oh, we have a pronunciation video on our website, too.
So yeah, I'll give this a try.
Yay, I persuaded Peter.
Yeah, everyone at home, everyone listening should try this, too.
Yes, because nobody will see your video, so don't worry.
OK, so we have another tactic, the fifth tactic.
Following the 50-50 input-output rule.
What is that?
Yeah, so this is an interesting technique.
I think I spoke about this many years ago, and then our head writer, Yuriy, and I took some time to refine this.
Right, Yuriy?
Oh, he nodded yes.
So forget language learning for a minute, and think about your daily life.
How much information do you consume each day?
So think about, let's do a percent.
Let's define consume as you watch your phone, you're reading on your phone, you're watching a video on your phone, you're listening to music, something, you're looking at your TV screen, right?
How much information are you consuming as a percent each day?
I would say like...
OK, and let's compare that with something that, so let's call that...
Produce.
Yeah, let's call that input.
OK, and then as you said, what did you just say?
Let's compare that with?
How much I produce a day?
So that would be like, production would be speaking, or writing, or doing work, or at work.
Actually writing, speaking, presenting, doing something where you're sharing something, you're adding something.
I would say the input is 90%, 95%, sometimes 99%.
Yeah, I think that's pretty fair.
So even in your own language or the language in your daily life, most of the time is spent on input.
Consuming things, scrolling, reading, watching.
This is OK, but the same with learning a language.
If we apply this, we would be listening to audio, reading a text, and not speaking, and not writing.
So this 50-50 rule all of a sudden seems very hard.
Because even in your daily life, you're only doing about 10% to 20% of output.
So what we do in this 50-50 rule is you shift from listening to audio or watching in a target language, listening to music, reading text, to actually writing or speaking.
I see. Yeah, actually that makes me think about my student story that I just shared.
Most of my students spend time learning, which is input, like learning or listening, reading.
And they don't spend much time on speaking.
And I think that is why they think they don't improve their speaking, because they don't spend that much time on that.
And if you think an hour, 30 minutes of reading and listening versus 30 minutes of speaking and writing, that's quite something.
So you don't have to think about it each session.
If I'm studying for an hour, OK, I'll split 30 minutes, 30 minutes.
But if you maybe study for a language lesson, one hour, or you take that lesson and then you're trying to speak for that whole hour, that's where you're trying to get to that 50-50.
Or if you study for 30 minutes, then write for 30 minutes.
I see. That's why our group classes are designed that way.
So before the class, we give some materials, so they study, and they maximize the one hour they're speaking in the group class.
That's the goal. But it's not so easy.
That's why this one's a very tough one, because you need to be diligent and you have to put in the time before you actually show up.
Yeah, it doesn't sound easy.
But if they do the tactics that we shared, like at least reading out loud, maybe a few minutes a day, or record themselves, I think it's also possible.
It's not so difficult tactics that we are sharing.
Yeah, this one is maybe I have a friend who's a writer, and now every day he has to write 2,000 words, which is, or maybe like for the week he has to kind of hand in an article.
But the way he trained was initially he'd have to write 300-word article for the day.
Then it slowly went up, right, or whatever the deadline was from when he got the assignment to when the deadline was.
And it slowly increased in the number of words.
So he had to train himself. But now it's almost like a machine.
He can do everything within the time parameters, the time that he's given.
So with this, too, don't start out with 50-50, because it will be very tough.
But try to go first assess where you are.
All right, when I sit down to study language, it's almost all reading. It's almost all listening.
It's almost all on the website or however you're studying in a book.
If you're studying for an hour, let's do 30 minutes. If you're studying for 30 minutes, study for 25, then write for 25, then write for five.
Then the next day, write for five. The next day, five. You can do three times, then move up to seven minutes.
I see. That makes me feel better.
I thought one hour studying and one hour speaking, that sounds a little hard.
But if I start small, then I can do that. I feel better. Thank you.
You're welcome. Yeah, it's good to be on my back and explain.
Yes, start small and gradually improve.
Okay, Peter. What's next?
Yes, we have a new tool on our website and it's very interesting. What is it?
So we have a new AI practice tool.
Yeah, it's a dialogue role play. So there you study the dialogue first and practice the role play with the tool.
And when you speak in the target language, you get the feedback.
Oops.
So this really changes things. And this is one of the really great uses for AI.
And there are many interesting tools out there to help productivity.
And this one will help with your speaking productivity, I mean, or helping you spend your time productively to learn how to speak.
It's very powerful.
Yeah, I also feel this is very useful for self learners too.
Because if you are not living in the target language's country, it's very difficult to find someone to practice the language with.
But this AI, this tool will help you practice the language.
Like you choose a role and the AI will become the other part. So you will have a conversation. So it's very interesting.
And when you speak, you get the instant feedback on how well you were able to speak in the target language.
It also gives feedback on grammar, the vocabulary. So please try it if you are on our website now.
Yeah. And in addition to our tool, there are other tools out there you may or may not be using.
But this AI really helps in one specific area with practice. It's very powerful for practice.
You can get really a lot of practice in so that when you speak with your teacher, because that human interaction is an excellent motivator in why a lot of people study.
So this will help prep you for that.
Yep, exactly.
Okay, next, what do we have?
Next, please continue with your existing routine. What do you think?
Because we gave a lot of feedback. So some people might think, okay, I'm going to change all my routine.
But we are not saying you have to change everything, but it's nice to use some of the tactics into their language learning routine.
Recently, I started a new routine. So when you start a new routine, where a good place to start is to see how your current routine is working.
Analyze what you're doing right now. So if you're listening to this or you're thinking about studying a language, look at your current routine.
If you're in the middle of studying a language, look at your current routine. Is it working?
Can you make your class every week?
There are certain language classes. My attendance is 90 percent. They're certain. It's 50.
And some of the classes I studied before and some of the classes I just show up at.
So recently I sat down and I looked and I was like, okay, which classes am I doing a good job with?
That was Korean and Italian.
Oh, I'm happy to hear that.
Yeah, I was doing a very poor job with Hebrew. So attendance was 50 percent and I'd spend zero time outside of the class.
So I sat down and I created a plan to change that.
I see. So if someone wants to improve their speaking abilities, then maybe they can see how much time they're spending on speaking or versus maybe listening, reading, and they can adjust the percentage as we just talked about.
That's very good advice. Yeah.
You start with the time you have in your week, then you go down to how much time you're spending on studying, analyze that, and you can shift around.
Yeah. Okay, there's last one. Last optional or quick one. Listening also helps speaking. So listen as much as possible.
Yes. And Kyejin, I think it's okay to count TV shows, movies, and music that you listen to in the target language as studying.
Yeah, I totally agree. I have many, many friends, I mean, foreigners who watch Korean drama almost every day. And do they speak full Korean? What do you think?
No. No. But my students who study Korean and watch a lot of Korean dramas did improve.
So if they know some knowledge, at least grammar, vocabulary, and they are exposed to that language by watching drama or music, then they improve.
So my advice would be listen as much as possible while studying.
So I think, you know, I wanted to add one thing, and if you do 100% listening, try to add one or two percent to writing, meaning hit pause for one second and jot down a phrase from the drama.
Or jot down some lyrics, or if you even just take that 100% and shift it to 98, 95, because just by stopping and then writing something down, you'd be like, oh, that wasn't so hard.
And the next time you might write two or three phrases down, and you'll build a bit of a library of interesting things that you want to share next time you have the speaking opportunity.
True. That's a good one, too.
Yeah.
Okay. So Peter, which of these is your favorite way to practice speaking?
I like the reading out loud, much like you. Read out loud, record it, listen back. That's the hard part.
And, you know, if you have a premium plus, you just share it, or if you know someone who speaks the language, share it with them.
And if not, there's so many powerful speech, text-to-speech tools. Get what you want to say properly spoken in your target language, and then practice that again and again, and then compare after a week or so.
This is a secret way to get fast, good, so fast.
Yeah. Very helpful advice from our language senpai, language senior who learned 12, 13 languages.
Study.
The difference in learning.
Okay. Yes.
Also, you know, if you're listening to this, you have access to the site.
And as Kyejin and I spoke about, the site has all of these tools and all of these things to really help you. I would try the AI tool.
I would really go to a lesson, listen to the line by line, and then practice with the AI tool, which is available on every dialogue now.
Yeah, indeed. Actually, if you want to try these all the tactics, you can do it on our website. We have line by line audio, and also we have dialogue for each lesson, so you can read it out when you're on.
And also shadowing, yes, line by line, and dialogue roleplay, that's also there. So sure, please try it.
Kyejin, what's your favorite?
My favorite is also the reading out loud, and these days, dialogue roleplay. I love roleplay.
It's very fun.
Okay, so thank you so much for watching this video.
And let us know if you try any of these and email us at inner.circle at innovativelanguage.com.
Thank you so much. Bye, everyone.
Bye.
We'll see you next time.

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