Last summer when I was alone in 

Tallin Estonia, I had to face a challenge this

challenge was the simple phrase and many others like it "Tere tulemast" I presume
none of you speak Estonian I take that as a no so and I was in the same situation
as you are right now back in the last summer, because I never spoke Estonian,
never read Estonian book never watch an Estonian movie, never actually seen
Estonian song or met anybody from Estonian I had to act quickly, I had to be able
to day one single spot, be able to understand what the barista was saying when I
was ordering my coffe, be able to understand what the passport security person
was asking me at the airport, when I was coming to Estonia I was living Tallin, I
had to be able to comprehend the language, to comprehend it at that very single
moment, and this experience reised the question. How can one learn a language in
a very limited amount of time, comprehend it, be able to act with it, be able to
work with it , to meet people with it and most of all progress in it. I attended to talk
last september which was right above this issue it was held by a polyglot, she was
from Slovakia and was willing to talk about how he/she is learning, how she
was learning and is still learning to this day new languages, she told us of
people that spek six, ten, twelve, sixteen languages even they devote their
whole lives to this idea of being able to comprehend every single one of them, or
as many as they could, and if you were thinking that there is a magical way, some
magical secret which she told me, I have to disappoint you there is no single super
method. The polyglots all of them worldwide agree one thing there is no way one
fastest way how to learn a language, it has to be personal, you have to be able to
choose a personal way and find it, and find your language through a personal
personal way and modify it as much ass you possibly can to suit you to suit your
type of learning. Some people prefer stuck thier head for vocabulary and to fill it
with words and phrases until they head bursts some of us prefer to watch a
movie to talk with a person in a pub or like me when going back from the librer
working in a essay for six hours till dying morning meet a drunken Frenchman and
talk to him in play French and practice as much as I can. There are many ways,
some people even prefer those video games that you know your phone's you know
the memorizes and those kind of things I'm not much fan of that but that's a
personal thing again today what I'll be presenting to you is something differente, it
is or these are four points which are intrinsic to our learning, which are building
blocks of any learning of any language you will ever do doesn't matter if it's a
Chinese, if it's Arabic if it's Hebrew, Estonian, French, Spanish, any language will
so ever these four things: message, importance, observation, comprehension all
amount of the same thing the same goal learning a language effectively and they
all are as you'll soon find interconnected. You can not just focus on one of
them, you can not just focus on importance and hope that you will through this
relevance to who you are you´ll be to able to learn quickly or similarly you can not
just focus on comprehension as we do in our schools nowadays, we focus too
much on memorizing vocabulary or learning phrases about whatever thing that
there prescribed by the booklets, but that´s not how you learn a language. I´ll get
into them more later once the progress through the talk. The first one is
message some of you this might seem a bit bizarre, but would I be my message, it
is well you´ll see yourselves. This sentence in in Stonian since you know we speak
Stonian I´m not going to be asking what actually means but does anybody or
rather let me read it, I´m not fluent Stonian so just like be ready with me
so. Speaking Stonian Now still you have no clue what this actually means, I don´t
presume that from some magical learning of some broken Stonian magically speak
or learn, understand this one phrase but already you can see that there is yah
twice and because language is logically structured, you are able to deduce that,
probably because also these two works are the same endings this one, and this
one and then these two then maybe that means end and already in less than 30
secconds you understand one word in languages you´ve never seen in your whole
life, and through progressing like this, through making these small steps you
´re able to actually learn it. What if I put another sentence here in a language of
some of you speak, maybe more that some of you, maybe all of you. But certain
that is more familiar, because we are anglephone, francophone society, so most of
us presumably and, what if I put another, one which all of us speak, in
English. This is how you learn a language, once you find the meaning, the
message behind a sentence you´re able to acquire the language, there are
signifers in a language, which all help you to build a logical structure of this set
language. When you understand the message, you unconsciously acquire
language, this doesn´t mean that by understand one phrase from the charter of
human rights from the United Nations you understand Stonian or French or
English for that matter. It simply means that you will have the bulding blocks with
which you can build the learning, you have this, the logical structure which build on
this language. Then you have importance, every language, no matter what it is has
to be useful to you, has to be relevant to you, has to be something you
enjoy. When I was in school many years ago, in my elementary school I was forced
to study Spanish, I hate it, I couldn´t stand it. Nothing against Spanish, nothing
against that It was just simply didn´t enjoy it I could´t learn a single sentence. When
I was in Italy for my ..... Edinburgh residential trip, I decided to study Italian and I
was like yes, I´m gonna learn this language and I failed because I was not able to
enjoy it, because I just didn´t enjoy, and actually from the one trip, I had more from
Swedish, because I met a Swedish friend that I´m still in talk in contact to this
day. It is this enjoyment is relevance to you that is important. It has to be relevant
to ours education, something that you want to learn because you want to progress
in your life. Has to be relevant because of your family, your friends, if you find
enjoyment in it. It has to be relevant because of your job maybe you have a job in I
don´t know Ireland or Stockholm and you need to learn the language to be able to
work with it, and like me maybe it´s through the travels because being
international, this what this whole day is about, means that you want to open
yourself to other opportunities. For me that means to see different cultures in
different worlds and as a part of that, you have to be able to speed the language at
least some degree. Languages are tools just like any other part of our lives, they
can be used in some meaningful way once you find this what this meaningful way
is you´re to able to learn much faster and therefore chooses languages useful to
you. Now on to observation and this is probably the part that I think might be one
the most important simply because it can be so easily. This photo was taken when
I was also last summer walking to the Mont Blank in between France, Italy and
Switzerland and when I took it I was jus crossing the Italian-French border I juts
came from a little refugee on the French side, and was walking up the mountain to
cross the Italian side and in the same day I spoke French and Italian My French is
by no means good but I´m able to talked with it, Italian is much harder, but still I
was to able to comprehend the people ask for a bed and a dire situation not be
forced to sleep outside and wind and freezing cold because they´ll be not being
enjoyable at all. And from it I realized that there are two key things, that you
have to be actually immerse yourself in a language to some degree, you cannot
just stand set at home and hope the language will come to you that the knowledge
that you are able to do with will actually come to you some like that, you have to be
actually able to put yourself there to pay attention to observe how people are
doing, how they speak, how they emote and hopefully from that build up your
knowledge and this is actually a key thing and I think people should start doing
this you should be look for something called: parent speaker Now this is what I
learned during the talk about the polyglots back in september, it is an idea that
when you´re speaking a new language you´re like a baby, you have don´t know
how to actually operate language, you´re just put in a world we´re all adults
speaking in a foreign language and you´re hoping to crack grab grasp a meaning
about it, grasp something that you can´t know it´s a world that you can´t
understand, what you need is a parent speaker, somebody that will speak to you
in the same level, will help you learn new words and will actually correct you, will
actually give you advice how to speak better and will now diminish you in any sort
of way. That is key because when you´re able to practice you speaking you´re
learning in that sense that you learn faster because and this is actually gonna be
the very next slide I think afterwards so I´m gonna quickly get this sorry for
that. When you actually learn a language through comprehension, through
observation you are able to then speak the language, and this is one of the
most important things because how else would you communicate with people
especially when you want travel, you need to be able to act on your
knowledge . You have to be able to actually find somebody that you can talk to an
equal sense and you have to be able to listen a lot. People don't want to listen they
revert back to English they revert back to to their natural tongue because they are
scared don't be scared this gonna sound like a great cliche don't be scared to
make mistakes, make them. They're gonna be corrected by people and you gonna
learn from that. And now the other thing that I was hoping to talk
about Comprehension. And this thing can be slipt into two parts memory and
comprehension or knowledge And I feel like nowadays in schools what we do is we
just stuff our heads with vocabulary until they explote we shouldn't be do that
because memory or knowledge is in comprehension like for example I know one
sentence in Irish speaking Irish does it mean I speak Irish by no means I don't
even properly know what the sentence means but I know that it's Irish I have that
one piece of knowledge but I couldn't say I comprehend the language by no means
whatsoever and that's the issue we force ourselves to learn complex vocabulary
that is nor relevant to us. We force to stuff our heads with words that don't be are
any meaning and that will never probably use ever in our lives we don't actually
focus on comprehending them comprehending the structure and the sentences to
actually using our existing knowledge from other languages from my maternal
tongues to actually progress further. We should be doing that we should be trying
to learn with use of our existing languages we should be using a native tongues we
should be using our abilities to speak from they one we should be looking at
actions more than words or nouns . When you learn what it means the word to hurt
it's still more useful than actually what it means what the word arm is it You can be
like hurt but what do we do with it an arm it doesn't work like that. Actions are more
important than words and this sort of progress is somenthing that's key for learning
a language effectively. So I presented to you today is four principles and some key
points some things that maybe you've heard some things that you that
maybe we're new to you the parent speaker probably . All these things are
essential you can remove one and hope that the others will come with it or that you
focus only on one of them and completely disregard the others it is important to
push yourselfs to your limits to go out there and this is gonna sound like a great
cliche once again but to push yourself go out there and actually experience the
language firsthand. No school, no institution no book can ever give you that and
just only very end I would like to dispel one last thing that I've been told in past that
I've heard people tell me or people tell other people, that it's talent that's required
that for being able to learn languages you need talent you need to be able to have
this magical skill with things that you're born with, it's no true anyone can learn
language anyone I've known when they push themselves hard enough they're able
to speak a language some people are far superior to me and ther are probably
hundreds and millions alike that. But it is that thing that you push yourselves that
differentiates you from other people this push. So don't be scared to push. Thank
you.