Language-learning wisdom from TED Talks
To speak Japanese better, focus on getting your message across and find fun ways to study
Two popular TED Talk videos have some good points about language learning and effective communication.
Forget yourself, focus on communicating
In the first video,1 Marianna Pascal, an intercultural communication specialist, observes that a person’s ability to communicate in a foreign language doesn’t necessarily reflect their language level. In other words, someone who has a studied a language for a long time and has a good formal knowledge of it can struggle to communicate well, while another person with a comparatively low grasp of a language can communicate effectively. That’s something I’ve seen among Japanese students who are studying English. I’ve also noticed (not without a smidgin of chagrin) that some people who are less proficient in Japanese than me can express themselves much better than I can.
For Pascal, the key lies in a person’s attitude to language and communication. She believes that a strong desire to communicate makes a person less self-conscious—they are less focused on themselves and their mistakes and more focused on the other person and getting their message across. Again, that’s something I’ve experienced myself. When I have a burning desire to say something, I forget the subtleties of grammar and keigo and just focus on making myself understood. But my communication level drops in situations where I’m more worried about speaking correctly.
I think this point has a couple of important implications for missionaries in Japan. First, it’s encouraging that, while we desire to be as proficient with Japanese as we can be, low language proficiency doesn’t necessarily entail low communication ability. Second, it’s a reminder that our language learning isn’t divorced from the rest of our life. Rather, as our grasp of the gospel and our love for Japanese people increases, so will our motivation to communicate in Japanese, and we will be better able to communicate, even if our language level doesn’t change much.
Find fun ways to learn a language
In another TED Talk, polyglot Lýdia Machová describes how she talked with other polyglots to find out if there was anything that they all had in common.2 She discovered that rather than learning from textbooks, they had all found ways to make language learning enjoyable. Machová, who has set herself a goal of learning a new language every two years and was on her eighth language in 2018, watched Friends in German and read Harry Potter books in Spanish.
While I think there still may be a place for slogging through textbooks (especially for learning grammar), there’s a lot to be said for finding and using fun ways to acquire language so that it becomes something you enjoy doing. Again, that’s been true in my experience. Over the years, I’ve been hooked on reading manga, watching dramas, writing blog posts that get corrected by native speakers (on lang-8.com), listening to podcasts (especially japanesepod101.com), and taking conversation classes via Skype (using cafetalk.com). I’ve also managed to resurrect my high-school French using an app called Duolingo. All of these activities feel more like fun than study. If you need inspiration, a good place to find out about websites, apps, podcasts, and video channels is the All Language Resources website (https://alllanguageresources.com/japanese).
These days, there is a plethora of resources out there for learning languages. It can be a good investment to explore them and see if you can find a few you really enjoy. As Machová says, maybe you’re just one vmethod away from becoming a polyglot!
1. Marianna Pascal, “Learning a language? Speak it like you’re playing a video game,” https://youtu.be/Ge7c7otG2mk (accessed Dec. 5, 2020).
2. Lýdia Machová, “The secrets of learning a new language,” https://www.ted.com/talks/lydia_machova_the_secrets_of_learning_a_new_language (accessed Dec. 5, 2020).
Images are screenshots of the videos referenced.