Polyglot Gathering Report Day 2

(Photo: with Connor Clyne and Ellen Jovin… in order of height)

At 10am yesterday morning was a fascinating panel discussion with five hyperpolyglots who were asked about different approaches to language learning

“How Hyperpolyglots Learn Languages” – 10am Monday 16th June, #PolyglotBer

This is a brief summary of each panel member's main points. You will find a lot of interesting, differing and somewhat controversial points of view.

I hope it will be thought-provoking.

How Would You Learn A New Language From Scratch?

1. María de Vera

I would focus firstly on sounds by listening to a lot of natural language, relaxing, and immersing myself in the language (this is exactly what you do in my courses!)

Next, I would go into the grammar in-depth because I personally like to know the structure of the language in order to have confidence in moving forward with it.

2. Cesco Reale

I start with phonetics, because it's my speciality and main interest. So I'd spend a few hours exploring the component sounds of the language in as much depth as possible.

After that, my main tactic is language exchanges, and I tend to exploit my available friends during lunch and dinner to do this! I have no special system while doing this, I just work with sentences in the target language.

3. Niels J.L. Iversen 
My main criteria for deciding whether to start learning a language is whether you can pronounce it from the script alone.

Chinese or Arabic, for example, I wouldn't learn because the pronunciation isn't evident from the writing.

I start by looking for a good dictionary and a good grammar book. I also need a beginner's textbook. I don't follow the textbook as they intended, rather I just look at the easy texts.

I then make huge word lists (aim for 10,000 words) and just learn as many as possible so that I can enjoy reading. I won't even consider speaking with anyone because even if I can say something, I will certainly not understand the reply.

4. Richard Simcott

I look at the materials that are available, especially songs, and spend a lot of time listening, copying and eventually singing those songs myself.

I then look at available courses and see which one strikes me as interesting and matches my learning style. I go through the first chapter as intended, then write out all the texts myself, as it helps me to recall the language later.

I will speak from day 1, because I love speaking with and producing a reaction from people. This reaction then gives me the motivation to learn more. I set myself goals like “this week I will be able to talk about the weather”. The overall aim is to start to adopt the language for myself and begin to interact with people.

With vocabulary, it's really just a question of “keep going till you know it”. Multiple repetitions of words are necessary, including planning for forgetting, which is inevitable, and letting vocabulary build up in your mind gradually over time.

5. André Liss

I wouldn't add much to what's already been said. However, music is a big thing for me. I would start with the 500 most high-frequency words and look for those in songs in order to make a start.

How Long Do You Spend Learning A Language Every Day?

Everyone had totally different answers to this question, which varied from 15 minutes to 8 hours per day.

There was no real consensus on what would constitute “normal”; everyone said it would depend in each case on motivation to learn the language and urgency to do so.

How Do You Learn Vocabulary?

1. María

I never use Anki or other SRS systems. As I'm a translator I've always used a lot of parallel texts. I like to read and use things I like (a key part of the StoryLearning® method) and grow my vocabulary that way – cookery books in particular, but it could be romance novels or movies.

2. André

Vocabulary lists and copying out words work for me. I also download classical literature onto my iPad and read it with an offline dictionary.

Mnemonics I've found to be useful at the beginning stages, but less so as you get more advanced.

3. Richard

I look at vocabulary from common topics in course books (eg. weather) and see if there are any similarities with languages I already know. I also use mnemonics and word association a lot.

Vocabulary learning is a continuous process that never stops. At school, I used to write out word lists with English and German on each side of the paper and then test myself until I knew them. It's rudimentary but it works.

4. Niels J.L. Iversen

I use word lists based on texts. Word lists can definitely work for those who don't mind using that method, but are horrible for those who don't like the idea.

5. Cesco

I'm a lazy language learner and so never use any special techniques. I'm interested in etymology, and this helps me a lot, but mostly only in Latin languages with common roots.

This was a fascinating discussion, probably not done enough justice from my brief notes!

What really stood out for me was just how different an approach to learning everyone has.

Judith, moderating the discussion, made the interesting observation that the methods and approaches discussed were all very low-tech, which is something that should give us all pause for thought!

Were you at the conference in Berlin? Click here to Tweet out this report!

Olly Richards

Creator of the StoryLearning® Method

Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearning® method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.

Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.

When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preaches—he speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.