[0:12]My story starts in Moscow. I was 15 years old, my best friend and I, we were part of a group of Westerners visiting the Soviet Union. This was in 1987, a few years before the fall of the Communist regime. We were given an official tour guide who was assigned to us and the tour would start in the morning and we were checked in to our hotel rooms for the night. My friend said to me, let's go outside and look at the city. I thought it was a great idea. Dumb idea. So I, we grabbed our coats and we snuck out past security and into the street. We found the entrance to the metro. The Moscow underground transportation system is the deepest one in the world. The ride down the escalator took a full minute. Once we were down there, my friend had it right to an open train and I I pulled him back. I said, wait. Let's write down the name of the station, so we can find our way back. So I had a notepad and I took a notepad and I wrote down the letters of the station and we hopped on the train and went some train hopping. And that was fun because, well, actually it was weird. There were a lot of people, they probably all coming home from work and they were all dressed in brown and gray clothes and it looked very, very different from what we were used to at home. Uh, but the stations were lovely. There were stations with statues, uh with paintings on the wall and and and glass displays and it was really like museums. Uh we would never have expected that and everything was perfectly clean. Well, what was weird though is that the people, nobody seemed to speak and everyone seemed to be looking at us and it kind of weirded us out. So after about 20, 30 minutes, we we've had it we we had enough and we wanted to go home. I showed my note to to someone and they directed me over there and then over there I showed my note to another person and they directed us to the other way. And then a third person directed us sideways. That was a little confusing. Oh, then I saw it, over the stairs, the sign. Turned out I had written down the Russian word for exit. So we headed upstairs and we found a taxi that was that was great and told the driver, you know, into this hotel and then he was willing to take us and I remember sitting next to the driver, handing him 50 rubles and he looked at me and he said, Net dollar. 50 dollars, that was like, I don't know, 20 times that amount or something. Uh that was not an option for us. So we had to get out of the taxi and he drove away, leaving us standing there. Uh, it was cold night and you know, everything was strange for us and we were teenagers and we were pretty nervous, didn't know what to do. Well, we started walking. We walked to the end of the block, we turned the corner and 200 yards in front of us, the interest hotel. Well, this experience affected me in two ways. The first is that anytime after this trip that I hear would hear anyone speak Russian, I would just cringe. And the second one is that it taught me the importance of of understanding the local language when you're traveling. And it actually led to me learning another four languages fluently over the following years. Now before I go on, I'd like to know in the audience, can we have a little bit of light maybe in the audience? Uh just like to know who's by show of hands, who is not a native English speaker? That's must be 99%. Uh anyone who doesn't speak English, stand up. All right, so I I can assume all of you have, uh you know, gone through the process of learning a language. Um anybody who speaks three or more languages? Wow, that is maybe 70%. Four or more languages anyone? That's still quite a bit. Anyone speak five or more languages? Wow, come see me in during the break. All right, well, to me learning a language is is for me, it's like a it's like a deck of playing cards lying face down on the table. As you start learning and understanding, the cards start opening up for you. Now, there's no standard way of classifying this but as you learn, you reach certain milestones and the first one would be when about 25% of the cards are turned up, you reach like a basic level. At this level, you have a base vocabulary, some grammar and you're able to have maybe very simple conversations and communicate a little bit. And your study goes on until you reach this magical point of fluency, what we call being fluent in a language. Now, what does this mean? Being fluent in a language, it means that you've turned up more than 50% of the cards in the deck. And that is the point where you have where the language becomes part of your subconscious, so that even if you don't use it anymore for 10 years or longer, you will not forget it. You can go get back into it within a very, very short time. So, this is this is a level where you're comfortable thinking in the language and comfortable communicating in the language. Now, some people go on and you know, reach like a mastery level, by that time you know classic literature in the other language and have maybe an in-depth knowledge of specialized fields. Um that's often the point taken in Academia. For me, when I learned my first foreign language, I had a had a head start. Because, well, I was born to a German speaking mother and an American father. Now, when I was a baby, I didn't really understand that what my parents were speaking to me were two separate languages. But by the time I was two years old, I had figured it all out. Women speak only German, men only speak English. Imagine the fun my parents had, when they introduced me to couples. Well, being a bilingual, uh was actually pretty helpful in learning my first language. Uh definitely helped. If you're but it it also gave me something else. It gave me two identities and the ability to switch between them. When you're a native speaker of more than one language, then your your um personality, your humor, your your value system, they change as you switch languages. This can have huge advantages. I mean, it's some studies have shown like an increased problem-solving ability, uh or even a higher resistance to Alzheimer's disease. But I'm what I'm most interested in is that it's actually given me a lot of social benefits. When you're a native speaker or and then you you feel at home among native speakers, among a or in a culture, and also native speakers accept you as one of theirs. Now, is this only relevant to native speakers? And that's the big question. But wouldn't it be cool if a a person learning a foreign language could actually develop another identity and actually enjoy the social benefits of a native speaker that go beyond communication skills. Well, that's what happened to me. I was able to do that and I want to show you from my experience how I think this can be achieved. So if we say this green area here is the level of the native speaker, the first thing to note is that on your way to reaching fluency, there is not really any shortcut. There are some methods that you can use such as the Pareto principle where you identify the 20% of the most effective material, the study. There are some apps like for time-spaced learning that increase vocabulary retention. They save a little time but in the end, there's no way around working with the material, practicing it until you reach the fluency level. But the second thing to note is that going from fluency to mastery is a much slower process and it requires proportionally more effort. And that's why most people, they just stop at fluency. They know how to speak English, good enough. Um and they don't even attempt to venture on and I can understand it. But the good news is to get the benefits of a native speaker at a native speaker level, you don't have to reach go through mastery in the academic sense. In fact, you can skip the step altogether.
[9:24]So if you think about it, there are many native speakers who do not have an in-depth knowledge of specialized fields or a sophisticated vocabulary. So that's not really what is required. So how do you do it? What is required? Well, I want to give you three areas to focus on when you're learning and interacting with native speakers. The first is work on eliminating your accent. I'm aware I said eliminating, um it should be at least minimizing it. Um this is in my opinion the most overlooked aspect of language learning today. Uh but it's also the most important one to reach what I call a native speaker level or a speaker-like level. If you communicate without an accent or almost without an accent, this changes how natives behave towards you unconsciously. And it also gives you an ability to to adapt to a new self-image. The best way that I have found, the best exercise I have found to improve your pronunciation is what I call the perfect sentence technique. What you do is you find a native speaker to help you. And you take a book in the foreign language, you open it at a random page, and you read the first sentence. Then you ask the native speaker to rate you on obvious accent, slight accent, no accent. Then the native speaker will read this this sentence back to you. You have to listen carefully and then you repeat and you repeat this process over and over until the native speaker tells you that he can no longer hear an accent when you read the sentence. Now, I realize it can take a very long time even to just to get one sentence right. But I promise you, if you are persistent and if you patiently work on this, you'll be amazed what happens to your accent. The second area to focus on is using verbs and expressions that locals use. Now, we all know the situation that in vocabulary can be region-specific. Like in the US you you stand in line and the UK you queue. Um that's that's all good, but sometimes the the spoken word is so different, the speech is so different from from what you get in textbooks, that the books are almost useless if you want to converse with natives. Um I want to give you an example. In the French language. There are words like the travail, which is uh my work. Um a French person talking to his friend would probably say Mont-Boulo, which is a completely different word. The same for the clothes are levement but you will hear live frang. My or money is l'argent but uh people say l'fric, l'sou, or or many other expressions for this. So obviously, I'm only scratching the surface here, but here you actually have to learn all of these words and expressions one by one. And of course, you have to interact with natives to do that. Um but after you reach a critical mass that you're comfortable with, you'll it'll actually be easier when you encounter something new, you'll just pick it up in one go, like like native speakers would, who hear words that or expressions they didn't know before. The third area to work on is adopting cultural traits. What do I mean by that? Uh, so let me ask you, what does this mean to you? Any Italians here? Okay, now, depending on what culture you're from, this could mean something rude or it could just mean something incredulous, like, why did you do that? Or or how could you? Uh or it could just be signaling food. Give me food. Um interesting. In the Middle East, this is just a standard way of signaling, please wait. So, these kind of traits, you have to internalize and you have to and sometimes they're hard to spot. And it takes a lot of active listening. I want to give you a few more examples. So, imagine I'm with three of my friends, an American, a German, and a Frenchman. And like we're walking and maybe the American bumps his head and his initial reaction might be, ouch. That's how you say it in English. But the German that, you know, gets, I don't know, elbowed in the crowd, he would say Awa. And the French person, uh he might step on a nail and say, Ay.
[14:33]So you notice these so these differences, uh they really require active listening. So all of these all of these uh three things that I told you, which is pronunciation and and uh and colloquial speech and adopting these cultural traits, they all require that you interact with natives as much as possible. Ideally, you should fully immerse yourself in the culture. Now, if you have the chance to live abroad for a while, that would be great. Um or maybe live among natives in your hometown. Uh perhaps just have a romantic relationship or even just spend times with, you know, with the co-workers. Of romantic relationships, I could do a whole talk about that. That's really, that works really well for these things. Um, but uh, yeah, so this will be different for everybody, of course. But uh, even when you're not around natives, your learning must not stop. Because what you can do, you can watch TV shows and films, you can mimic the characters, you can write down anything that you haven't heard of before and practice that. I also want to encourage you to um to learn the lyrics of songs. Songs are really great because they tell stories and they don't not only help your pronunciation, when you sing them, but they also if they're emotional, they can anchor these expressions into your active vocabulary. And it's like speaking all day and really using these expressions unconsciously. It's a it's a great way. So music, definitely. Um the other thing you need to move towards native speaker status is the right mindset and and a belief that if you sound like a native, express yourself like a native, talk like a native, and act like a native, you will actually achieve a native-like level. So, if I could only leave you with one thing today, it would be work on your pronunciation. Because pronunciation helps any stage of the learning process, even in the very beginning, it will speed up everything and it also is the key to reaching a native speaker level, or almost native speaker status. So, uh, before I go, I'd like to tell you how I was able to overcome my fear of the Russian language. It was a very, very elegant solution. I married a Russian girl and I now have little kids in my home that speak Russian to me every day. So, I want to thank you and before I go, I just want to wish you mucho exito con sus estudios de idiomas. Set un plaisir de presenter a von vous de von vous aujourd'hui. Uh ni miakhem lakhem Harba achalah imalimudim, adan van zar zecht zich gehrt, good luck to you all and spbasiba.
