FULL INTERVIEW: This Medical Student Learned To Speak Phenomenal Chinese Within **One Year** in the UK with his Efficiency Focused Methods Have Sending Shockwaves Reverberating Throughout The Language Learning World

Open Forum
21

“Will. Can. Read.”
You forgot to mention:
“Very. Poorly.” ´(knowing only ca. 100 Chinese characters by heart so far) :slight_smile:

“Their literacy skills advance at lightning pace because, like children, they already know the words”

  1. There’s no “lightning pace” for children when it comes to learning (languages) in general and reading / writing in particular.

Let’s say a baby is born in a Portuguese speaking environment. As an educated and adult native speaker of German who wants to learn Portuguese from scratch, I could learn Portuguese

  • in ca. 1.5 years (investing about 2000-2500 hours = ca. 4-4.5 h per day ) to reach a C1 level in all four language skills
  • start studying computer science (or another subject I’m interested in) full time at a university in Portugal or Brasil
  • and get a degree
    before the child as a native speaker is 6 years old and has a very limited vocabulary of about 7000 words!

I really love children, but when it comes to learning effectively and efficiently they’re out of the competition: not only in language learning, but in learning in general!

(Little) children only have two advantages compared to adults in this context:

  • A lot of time with tens of thousands of hours of immersion and constant social interactions with native speakers.
  • Brains with a higher degree of neuroplasticity so that their L1 pronunciation is normally much better than the pronunciation of adult L2 learners.
  1. Reg. literacy skills of little native speakers.
    Healthy 5 years olds are usually fluent in their L1(s), but with ca. 5000 words under their belt, their vocabulary is still very limited (the same is true for their cognitive skills, their knowledge of the world, the sophistication of the tools they can use, etc.).

Therefore, the process of learning to read and write (well) is usually still very slow for children. That is, it doesn’t take weeks or months, but many years.

Another example:

  • As a German native speaker, I couldn’t read “The Lord of the Rings” in its entirety before I was 12 years ago. Then I could read it in 2 days non-stop.
  • When my nephews were 10 years old, they also wanted to read “The Lord of the Rings”, but they gave up in frustration after the first few pages because the text was simply too difficult for them.
    And we’re only talking about a popular fantasy novel here without any intellectual challenges that two little native speakers with
  • probably more than 40000 hours (!) of constant immersion in their L1,
  • thousands of social interactions with other native speakers
  • complete fluency in their L1
    couldn’t read!

The expression “lightning pace” is therefore the last one that comes to my mind in this context :slight_smile:

Besides: many children who are completely fluent and with flawless pronunciation in German, but come from families with an immigrant background, find it even more difficult to read and write in German.
And there are (too) many who will never really succeed.

How do I know? I’ve seen enough of the latter as my clients :slight_smile:

Be that as it may, from my experience with several languages (English, French, Spanish, etc.) my guess is:

  • L2 learners who haven’t read at least ca. 2-3 million words don’t have any advanced reading skills in the “easier” L2s.
  • In grammar-heavy languages such as Russian and distant languages (Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, etc.), you probably need to have read ca. 3-4 million words before reaching a C1 level in reading comprehension.
    After that, it’s possible to read more complicated non-fiction texts, but the learner may still have difficulty reading the equivalents of “The New York Times”., “El País”, “Le Monde”, “Die Zeit”, etc. in their L2s with ease.
    And they will struggle even more when reading (challenging) novels, esp. before 1950!

To give you a last example here: reading Stephen King’s “It” in Br. Portuguese.

  • I’ve been learning Br. Portuguese for ca. 2.5 years.
  • I know Latin, French, and Spanish quite well.
  • I could read and listen in Br. Port. from minute 1.
  • I could speak / write simple phrases right from the start.
  • I could learn several thousands of words in a matter of days with Memrise because of my familiarity with Spanish, French and English.
  • Using LingQ and ReadLang, I’ve read almost 1.5 millions words so far.
  • I’ve probably listened to ca. 800 hours of YT videos, podcasts, etc. in Br Port.
  • In addition, I have more than 40000 flashcards (Anki+Memrise), and I’m doing them almost every day.
    Apart from that, I’m not even mentioning all the vocab + grammar stuff that I did on PortugesePod101 and Busuu…

Overall, I must have invested more than 1500 h in Br. Port. so far.
However, I’m still struggling with Stephen King’s “It” (ca. 450k words=!
And this despite the fact that I know this soft horror novel inside and out having read and listened to it in German and other L2s!

So please don’t tell me how good Will’s reading skills in Mandarin are just by honing his oral skills and doing flashcards!
In a much easier L2 than Mandarin, I must have practiced with a similar or greater amount of flashcards than Will has in combination with

  • much more reading
  • and a far better understanding of the L2 grammar,
    but I’m still struggling with an intellectually undemanding soft horror novel!

In short:
I love that Will can speak fluent Mandarin after about 1.5 years!

However, when it comes to reaching an advanced level in reading (and writing), he still has a very long road ahead of him, esp. when he wants to read specialized literature in medical science and not just the first Harry Potter novel :slight_smile:

OK, I’ve got to take care of other things now…

Nice day to everyone
Peter

22

PS:
Reg. learning characters (here: kanji) without an articial SRS such as Anki:

“We want to show you how to read Japanese in a simpler and faster way. Instead of studying each kanji character in isolation with the use of flashcards or writing each one by hand while hoping someday to arrive at the point where you can actually read Japanese articles, why not try learning kanji and vocabulary more quickly with the help of mnemonics and then practice reading them in real sentences almost immediately?”

So, “mnemonics + reading” as a natural SRS is also a winning combo here.

BTW, you could also ask Eric from LingQ, who started learning Japanese by reading “a lot” :slight_smile:

Bye for now.

23

“Will. Can. Read.”
You forgot to mention:
“Very. Poorly.” ´(knowing only ca. 100 Chinese characters by heart so far) :slight_smile:

This is false. Will Can read extensively. He told me after the podcast that he can read books and when he comes across the odd character on a page he doesn’t recognise he will ask a friend. He knows thousands of characters, His reading ability is good. I don’t know why you got the impression that it wasn’t. We didn’t go into this in the podcast because I wanted to focus on how he learned to speak which, as it turns out, is also how he learned to read.

There is evidence from a number of case studies now that learning to speak fluently first helps immensley with learning to read later.

24

I largely agree with your excellent points.

But I would only delay speaking for a short while so I could prime the brain to be able to process the sounds properly. This is especially important with tones. Once I felt capable of producing the sounds I would start doing so immediately and consistently thereafter.

Re: SRS
I do not do Anki, nor have I ever. So whatever I know about characters, I have learned by writing them out by hand, watching subtitled videos or listening and reading on LingQ.

Oh my goodness that sounds extremely inefficient. I would recommend at least trying space repetition. How many characters do you know? Are you literate in Mandarin/ Japanese?

Whatever works best for you. But I’m just concerned it might not be possible to become literate within a single human lifespan in that way.

25

I don’t write off other approaches. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in language learning it’s: DON’T BE IDEOLOGICAL. This isn’t politics. Like if I have an opinion on politics and I’m wrong, as long as my argument is persuasive then I win. But in language learning if my argument is wrong, then I end up not learning languages efficiently and suffer great pain and distress .

There is FAR too much ideological thinking in language learning. So I am very open minded. Many of my points above are made in the spirit of waging war against baseless language learning ideologies. E.g. the idea that early output is a dangerous thing.

So I will watch the video you sent with the most open of all convievable minds. Though, the information you have given me so far ,if it is correct, tells me 1) the method is probably far less efficient than Will’s and 2) It would suit far fewer people since most people are extroverts not introverts and can think of nothing worse than sitting in a room listening to foreign languages all day without ever interacting with other human beings.

Hell, as a borderline introvert myself I can think of nothing worse than that.

26

@xxdb Memorise some common patterns and structures but do not spend lots of time reading about abstract grammar rules.

I’ve been thinking about this one and to me this is the least solid conclusion of all.

You are absolutely at liberty to ignore my advice - based on years of personal experience Chinese learning, interviewing multiple experienced learners and documenting a huge library of qualitative evidence in the form of my podcast and blog.

All I can say is I would personally feel extremely frustrated if you ended up approaching Mandarin without focusing on whole sentences and instead - as huge numbers of people do - by memorising individual words and reading about the language. I have seen too many slow motion car crashes. Please believe me when I say my main ambition in life is to avoid yet more Mandarin learning casualties and fatalities from occuring.

27

I’m sure it’s inefficient, but it’s not that bad either:
I basically learned a few hundred characters, just by writing them out by hand. Soon after, I started copying complete sentences from the textbooks I used (DeFrancis Readers). After that, the repeated exposure on LingQ and Youtube was enough to acquire the most frequent words. But a lot of reading / repeating is required, I’ve read 5 million words on LingQ.
I’m actually quite happy with my reading abilities, they are far superior to my listening abilities, which are my current focus, after that → speaking.
In summary, I wouldn’t recommend my approach. But learning without Anki / SRS isn’t hopeless either. It certainly takes longer, on the other hand you get some free handwriting practice out of this :wink:

28

I wonder, what whould it do to the Will’s performance, if we force him to spend time daily in holy wars like this one? Is he as good as we, who can argue for 2 hours a day over which approach is THE approach, scroll through facebook or tiktok for another 2 hours, check messengers and emails, come up with jokes or stickers chatting with our friends and still be determined doggedly enough to manage to find 30 minutes to practice our approach? Is he? I don’t think so… Love you guys, we’re the best!

29

Lol. He has a point guys…

30

All I can say is that I sincerely commend your patience and perseverance.

31

I don’t know if maybe I wasn’t clear enough but you seem to have drawn a wrong conclusion from my points, instead you focused on a portion of what you yourself said instead of what I said.

The issue I have with your brilliant incisive discovery is that you seem to IMO draw poorly backed up conclusions from blurred evidence and then be unable to defend your points logically instead just repeating yourself like a dog with a bone.

In particular you have a really really hard time arguing against your own points. If you need that spelled out you suffer from “not invented here syndrome”.

I’m going to respond to other people’s points because it’s not fun for me.
Thanks for the interview though.

32

@noxialisrex:
Where I think “speaking early” might become a “trap” is where we never try to address the things we put in the parking lot. If we become comfortable and stop trying to improve, those areas we ignored will stay unrefined. This is easily rectified by the individual, but, like everything else, it requires intention and deliberate effort.

I think this point is excellent and applies not just to speaking early methods. We tend to focus on those areas where we see success. e.g. I’ll just learn another few thousand words or I’ll just read another few thousand words etc.
In particular, most adults who achieve a high degree of English as immigrants don’t end up with a native accent, because they can already be understood.
In the case of children, they do end up with a native accent because they feel they need it, but they may have not focused on e.g. reading.

In my own case, my massive audio input plus anki gives me excellent passive understanding but I don’t have equivalent active grammar unless the language is a sister to one I already know. And if it has a writing system I don’t already know I will need to follow up afterwards.

33

@Peter:
Brains with a higher degree of neuroplasticity so that their L1 pronunciation is normally much better than the pronunciation of adult L2 learners.

I don’t actually believe this. I think that Children spend a much greater amount of time and they babble. They essentially practice natural IPA till they hit the right sound. If adults use IPA I believe they will hit correct pronunciation faster than a baby babbling will.

In a much easier L2 than Mandarin, I must have practiced with a similar or greater amount of flashcards than Will has in combination with

  • much more reading
  • and a far better understanding of the L2 grammar,
    but I’m still struggling with an intellectually undemanding soft horror novel!

This is why I’m having a hard time accepting the individual conclusions. It’s clear that Will’s complete method worked for speaking and listening. I’m not surprised by that because my method works for listening and my method also has tons of youtube etc. When it comes to active grammar, I’m not convinced that Will’s single example shows that it is sentences and not the actual immersion combined with the input combined with the speaking.

Which is it or is it all three?
We would need four double blind tests to find out with
Four different Will’s plus Will himself:
One doing youtube input one but none of the other stuff.
One doing immersion only but none of the other stuff.
One doing anki sentences only but none of the other stuff.
One doing output only but none of the other stuff.

Then compare and contrast to Will himself.
Since we don’t have that we can’t truthfully draw valid conclusions.

We can do a gut check and say “it feels correct based on my experience” but that’s about it.

My gut check is this:
Will got passive listening understanding from his youtube and immersion. He got active grammar from his immersion and speaking practice.
He got vocabulary from anki
He got corrected vocabulary from immersion and feedback.

34

@asad100101:
Right. I don’t think it can be overstated that immersion combined with speaking practice gives you an entirely holistic approach. There is no equally efficient substitute for immersion.
Since I can’t get immersion (nor am I interested in it) I’m interested in which of the other things I can do on my own can be tweaked. And it’s clear that listening, listening, listening does work.
Also: Steve Kaufman swears by a combo of reading, reading, reading combined with listening, listening, listening and does not speak till the end.

35

There is also at least one polyglot who does not speak to other people at all.

36

@Peter:
Extensive reading does work like a natural SRS and it has the advantage that it’s not mind numbingly boring. But it’s definitely slower than SRS targeted to frequency words and also suffers from the drawback that the low frequency words drop off pretty quickly once you get above 5,000 words.

For me personally I like lingQ because it takes the edge off of anki plus youtube/netflix only. Anki is boring. Netflix is impossible at the beginning and youtube takes ages to level up so you don’t notice the progress as easily as “last month I knew 4,000 words now I know 4,800 words”. LingQ lets you punch above your weight because you can just click on the unknown words.

So pros and cons.

37

It’s so true.

I only care about three peoples’ language progress: my girls in French and English and myself in Japanese and French.

I will also congratulate someone (or give them a thumbs up) if they personally post on here about how they had a breakthrough, etc. And I will be genuinely happy for them, even if they are already a polyglot celebrity or just an average learner.

Again, that’s if they personally post on here and feel euphoric about a breakthrough, not if someone else is posting about them in the 3rd person with only one hand on the keyboard.

38

Yeah I’m just not believing this story 1.5 years for all this? I think the time is getting stretched a bit or a lot. Also 3000 characters is not fluent in chinese this is like the language learner functionality benchmark for example 5k is what natives in china will have upon graduating highschool similiar to the 常用漢字 in japan. I don’t know what kind of books but if one only knew 3000 characters one couldn’t read (real books) unassisted for long periods of time without losing the story or becoming bored.

39

Yeah I’m just not believing this story 1.5 years for all this? I think the time is getting stretched a bit or a lot.

That’s fair enough. It’s basically impossible to prove. I base my judgment that Will is sincere based on interviewing him and speaking to him for hours afterwards.

Also 3000 characters is not fluent in chinese…I don’t know what kind of books but if one only knew 3000 characters one couldn’t read (real books) unassisted for long periods of time,

This is false. If the 3000 characters are the most common characters and your corresponding vocabulary is wide enough then this more than enough to read most modern novels, translated books and non fiction books on non technical topics of interest. Regardless of Will’s literacy levels he self-evidently is extremely “fluent” in the sense that he speaks the language fluently.

He is in fact significantly more fluent than most Mandarin learners I know who have extremely high levels of literacy, including some who have written theses in the Mandarin.

This observation and others like it has led me to suspect that the relationship between oral fluency and literacy has been exaggerated.

40

The point of my post and the podcast interview was not so that we can all congratulate Will. It’s to try and extract wisdom from his story which we all might be able to apply to our own language learning. I believe there is a lot we can all learn from what he told me about his techniques.