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In this video, I break down exactly how I get conversational in any language in
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00:00 This is the framework I used to learn three languages in 30 days each. And in this video, I’ll show you how to start using it today, even if you’re a total beginner. I used it in French to go from A1 to B1, in Filipino to go from barely speaking to conversational, and in Vietnamese to go from total beginner to basic conversations. Now, of course, I didn’t get fluent in 30 days. That’s impossible. But this framework did get me speaking faster than anything else I’ve tried. It’s called the why, what, how [music] framework from the book Ultralearning by Scott Young. The first part is what most people miss, but if you skip it, nothing else sticks. When I first set out to learn French, my goal was pretty simple. I want to learn French. But then the question quickly became, okay, what for? Casual conversation, reading, watching movies, work, travel, studying abroad, academic writing, acting. I had no clear target. And so my practice was also unclear. What finally changed things for me and will hopefully help you too was getting specific about the purpose. I shifted my goal from learn French to [music] navigate Paris and have a casual 00:59 conversation with a stranger. From there, I knew exactly what to work on, and more importantly, what I could ignore for now. I didn’t need business or cooking vocab yet. Instead, I would focus on asking for directions, introducing myself, and mastering the polite pronoun vu. Later, when I learned Filipino to surprise my mom, I focused mainly on expressing my feelings. Then when I learned Vietnamese for my girlfriend’s family, I focused on greetings, food, and household phrases. Now, this doesn’t mean that you should ignore everything else. There’s a time and place for everything. It’s just that when you’re learning quickly, you can’t learn everything at once. You have to prioritize, and specificity makes that possible. So, whatever language you’re learning, ask yourself, why am I learning this language? And what [music] exact situation am I preparing for? If you’re not sure how to answer that, try thinking about it like this. Instead of learn Spanish, think I want to order food, [music] make small talk, and handle basic emergencies while traveling in Mexico. Instead of learn Japanese, think [music] I want to watch anime 01:58 without subtitles and join fan discussions online. And instead of learn French, think I want to have dinner with my partner’s family and show them I’m serious. If you can picture the exact moment that you’re going to use the language, then congrats. Your goal is specific enough. But the next question is way trickier. What should you actually learn? Now that you’ve got a goal, the next step is figuring out what to learn [music] and in what order. Let me show you how I did this for my Vietnamese challenge. So, my goal was to deliver a toast in Vietnamese to thank my girlfriend’s family, answer a few questions about how I learned and handle basic household interactions. [music] So, I started thinking, okay, what do I need for that? Well, first, I’ll need to be able to say things clearly. So, pronunciation definitely. And because Viet is a tonal language, I’ll need to train both my ears and my voice. As for what to talk about, I’ll probably need family words, gratitude phrases, and maybe a few southern expressions. And since they’ll ask me questions, I’ll also need to understand questions, 02:54 respond quickly, and sound polite. Pretty soon, this list was a mess. So, I organized everything into three buckets. This idea comes directly from Scott Young, and I’ve adapted it for languages. Concepts are what you need to understand things like grammar and cultural context. [music] Content is what you need to memorize like vocabulary and skills are what you need to practice like listening, [music] speaking, reading, and so on. This here is my complete breakdown for Vietnamese. Let’s look at a few things here. So, at the very top of the concepts column, we have the [music] tone system because if you can’t hear or produce them, you’ll end up calling her mom a ghost. Right below that, we have the difference between regional accents since I was learning southern dialect. Under content, we have family vocabulary and gratitude phrases. And under skills, we have pronunciation, tone training, and of course, delivering the toast itself. Now, it’s your turn. Think about your goal and ask yourself, what concepts do I need to understand? What content do I need to memorize? And what skills do I need to practice? Then, just 03:58 start brainstorming and don’t overthink it. If something fits into more than one category, that’s fine. Just write it down twice. For example, in a language with a complicated writing system like Chinese or Arabic, knowing character shapes counts as content, but writing them smoothly is a skill. So, don’t worry about labeling things perfectly. Just make sure they’re on your list. And if you’re unsure of where to even start, try thinking about the universal parts that every language has. For example, the sound system, writing system, grammar, vocabulary, and culture. If your list has all five of those things, then you should be off to a pretty good start. But then the next question is, what order should you learn them in? So now that you have your concepts, content, and skills, we’ve got to figure out a sequence for learning them. For my Vietnamese challenge, I built the skill tree. It includes everything I needed to be able to do to deliver a toast to our family. I started with the alphabet and basic pronunciation, including things like knowing all the question words, all the way up to basic conversation 04:59 practice. For each ability, I set a clear test, like can I distinguish all six tones with 90% accuracy or can I recall 50 family words? This way, I knew exactly when to move on. Now, you don’t have to do something as complicated as this. I did this primarily for the narrative and because I like making over complicated structures. As long as you have a general map, you should be fine. Here’s how to figure out yours. First, start by finding hard dependencies. Things that are literally impossible without something else. For example, if we look here at one of my skills, self- introduction, what do I need to be able to do in order to introduce myself? Well, I need to be able to say phrases about myself. And before I can say phrases, I need to know how to say words. Before I can say words, I need to be able to say syllables. And before I can say syllables, I need to know what the alphabet is and read written Vietnamese. So, take every item in your inventory and work backwards. [music] Decompose it into its requisite skills. What do you need to be able to do before you [music] can do that thing? And if you don’t know where to start, try 05:58 thinking of three parallel tracks that you start sequentially but work on simultaneously. Track one is the foundation. This is whatever lets you perceive and produce the language. So the sound system, writing system, or gestural system. These are things that you start working on and never stop working on. As you progress through all the phases, you’ll keep on working on these things. So don’t wait until you’re perfect with your pronunciation to move on. Good enough is good enough. From there, we’ll move on to track two, expansion. This includes highfrequency vocabulary, grammar, and cultural knowledge. For vocab, you’ll learn the most important words for your goal. For grammar, you’ll learn how to actually combine the words and phrases to make meaning. So, this includes things like constructing sentences, asking questions, how to negate, and how to refer to time. Again, aim for good enough to move on and never stop refining. After that is track three, integration. [music] This is practicing your actual goal in small ways, even if it’s bad. So, if your goal is conversation, book a tutor 06:58 and start talking. If your goal is giving a presentation, then start rehearsing and fill in the gaps as you go. And if you want to watch shows in your target language, then check out our sponsor, LingoPi. Lingopi is the platform where you can watch your favorite shows, but with powerful language learning tools. For example, with their interactive subtitles, you can see every word in your target language, native language, or both at the same time. And if you hear a word you don’t know, just click it and boom, instant translation. But it gets even better. Want to make sure that a word sticks? I just click here to save it to my flashcards for later review. Or you can test your understanding with their interactive quizzes. I found this Japanese show on Lingo Pie about making matcha. And after spending just a few minutes on Lingo Pie, I noticed that I was already picking up more of the natural Japanese flow. And that’s what I like most. Lingo Pie takes something that I already do, which is watching a ton of shows, and makes it better in every single way. They’ve got a massive catalog of over 3,000 shows and movies 07:49 across 14 languages, so you’ll never get bored. But Lingo Pie isn’t just for passive learning. They’re just as good for active practice, too. Want to practice saying a phrase out loud? Enable repetition mode to loop tricky phrases. A phrase is too fast? Slow it down to the right level. Not sure if you’re getting the pronunciation right? Use their say it feature and get instant feedback on your pronunciation. 96. Okay. Okay. pretty good. You can use Lingo Pie on your phone, laptop, or even your smart TV so you can learn wherever you watch. Honestly, I wish I had started watching international shows through Lingo Pie because I know for a fact I would have gotten so much more out of them. But you don’t have to make the same mistake. Lingoi is hooking you up with a free 7-day trial plus an exclusive 55% off discount when you sign up using the link below. So, if you’re trying to learn a language and you love watching shows, Lingo Pie is a no-brainer. Click the link in the description below to start your free 7-day trial of LingoPie. All right, quick recap. Chapter 1 was about setting a specific goal. Chapter 2 08:50 A was figuring out what you actually need to learn, and chapter 2 B was organizing it. Now, we’ll discuss how you’re actually going to learn this stuff, and I’ll also share my own routine that I’ve used for these challenges. There are two sides to the how, input and output. Input is what goes in. It’s the material that you consume. If you’re starting from zero, the fastest way off the ground is with a guided course of some kind. For Vietnamese, I specifically bought a pronunciation course since it was the foundation of my skill tree. Other forms of input can include flashcards, YouTube videos, podcasts, or TV shows. The key is to get input that’s just above your comprehension level. This is the entire idea of the I+1 hypothesis, which you can read more about right here. Next is output. This is the part that most people skip. Output just means using the language. So saying things out loud, writing sentences, and talking to people. The point is, you can’t get good at speaking by only listening or matching or playing little games. It’s like trying to get good at guitar by 09:50 watching someone play guitar. So speak early and speak often. Even if you only know 10 words, practicing those 10 words out loud and get feedback. And if you’re looking for more examples of input and output, I’ve got a separate video right here where I walk through five of my favorite methods. You can give it a watch after this video. Now to apply this, take your concepts, content, and skills from earlier and find input and output methods for each one. For example, if you’ve got pronunciation, you could get your input from a pronunciation course and output by recording and listening back to yourself. For sports vocabulary, you could get input by reading headlines and output by writing about a recent game. And if your skill is conversation, you could get your input by watching a show and your output by speaking with a language partner. Not everything will need both input and output. So adjust accordingly. As for how much time to spend on each, it really depends. If your goal is speaking and that’s a primarily output driven thing, then spend more time on the output stuff. For me, since my goal was to deliver a toast 10:47 and have conversations, I spent 2 hours on output for every 1 hour of input. But if your goal is reading, listening, or watching shows, then you can spend more time on the input. But don’t neglect output. Now, let’s talk about how I structured my daily practice. This isn’t a prescription, by the way, since I don’t know your daily life or priorities. But since you’ve made it this far, I know that you can take what I’m about to share and adapt it to fit your own life. So, when I take on a challenge like this, I go all in. For the Vietnamese challenge, I practiced anywhere between 3 to 6 hours a day for 21 days straight. Now, that’s only possible because, well, I don’t have a real job. So, please don’t hold yourself to that standard. You can make great progress with far less time as long as you’re consistent. When it comes to practice, I don’t really follow a strict routine. Instead, I just treat it like a video game. Each day, I’d open up my skill tree and pick one ability to level up. That would be my mission for the day. From there, it really depends. If I need more input, I’ll watch a lesson or 11:49 review my flash cards. And if I need output, I’ll do a speaking [music] exercise or practice with a tutor. Once I’ve trained, I’ll have my tutors or AI test me. Can I actually perform the skill at the level that I set? If so, move on. If not, keep drilling. [music] Just remember, you don’t need to practice 6 hours a day to make real progress. As long as you know why you’re learning, what you’re learning, and how you’re learning, you’re on the right track. [music] And if you want to see me apply this framework to learning Vietnamese, watch this video next. [music]