Episode description

INTRO: Bienvenido a Amigos Learning Languages. Este es un podcast hecho por amigos, para amigos que aprenden lenguajes. Podrás escuchar a nativos hablando de su cultura, experiencias y consejos. In addition, you will be able to listen to people who are already on this path of learning, and how they managed to get where they are. Enjoy this journey with us! JOFFRE: Hola, amigo Jon. Bienvenido a este episodio de Amigos Learning Languages. Muchas gracias por aceptar la invitación. JON: My pleasure, Joffre. Glad to be here. JOFFRE: Gracias, amigo, ¿Podrías contarnos un poco tu experiencia en cuanto a aprender lenguajes? ¿Qué has venido haciendo hasta esta fecha? Por favor. JOHN: Yeah, well. I’ve been interested in learning languages since I was kid. And I’ve been an Italki teacher for a couple of years, I’ve given over 400 lessons. And I ended up starting a language school in Mexico City, which I’ve now handed over to somebody else. And I’ve been developing a new method of learning language for over a decade. And I’ve published a book about that, too. JOFFRE: Es muy bueno tener personas que están muy inmiscuidas en el aprendizaje de un lenguaje y por eso te he hecho esta invitación. ¿Podrías compartir con nuestros amigos tus consejos para aprender español e inglés? ¿Cuáles crees que serían los pasos que deberían dar las personas que aprenden un nuevo idioma? JOHN: Well, my theory is that it’s very important… There are three major stages in learning a language. First stage, it’s very important to learn the basics of pronunciation so that you learn good habits and you do not develop bad habits, cause it’s very difficult to break later on. Around that stage, you might wanna learn a little bit of basic grammar as well. But generally, it’s becoming more widely accepted that a more vocabulary-based method tends to be more effective than focusing too much on grammar. So that’s why I talk about the second phase of language acquisition, which I would advocate learning a lot of vocabulary, especially through reading to begin with. Because you can learn vocabulary very quickly and at your own pace. And that’s what a lot of polyglots do, they use what I call “brute force method” where they just read books that they’re interested in. And they’ll like, look up every word they don’t know, so they use an interest-based approach which is very good as well, because when you are interested in the content, you’re going to be that much more engaged in the learning. However, Stephen Krashen talks about how the language should also be comprehensible. And so that's kind of a challenge if you're reading adult level texts. So, I've really focused my method on this second stage of basically taking adult level texts that might be interesting to adults, and making them comprehensible. So, getting the best of both worlds. The third stage would be some sort of immersion. So, in order to really learn a language for most people, you do have to immerse yourself at some point by going to a country that speaks it or engaging in a lot of conversations with native speakers online. But yeah, that’s my general advice. NO MORE SPACE HERE FREE COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT AT: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/joffre/ep18-three-steps-learning-new-language-john-knebel Free sample book at: http://creolio.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Stories-de-la-Jungle-Level-One.pdf