Lessons
Class Introduction
18:18 2The Science of Memory
17:34 3Spaced Repetition
38:45 4Tools of Language Learning
11:30 5The Basics of Anki
29:22 6Analog Methods
17:37 7How to Hear & Form New Sounds
23:03Train Your Mouth
28:11 9Student Questions
22:49 10How to Learn a New Spelling System
39:48 11Typing in your Target Language
20:54 12Learning Simple Vocabulary
31:07 13Designing Your Flashcards
29:07 14Demo: Learning Simple Words
27:18 15Japanese & Chinese Flashcards
11:34 16Breaking Down Grammar
25:39 17Abstract Vocabulary
22:22 18Flashcard Review
19:14 19Demo: Grammar & Abstract Vocabulary
43:54 20Lang-8 & Assimil Books
23:37 21Making Language Work For Your Life
31:21 22Mobile Language Learning
25:45 23Study Habits Review
08:21 24Time to Play: Custom Vocabulary
31:11 25Flashcards for Abstract Words
42:13 26Listening & Reading Comprehension
52:54 27Time to Play: TV & Film
17:11 28Time to Play: Speaking Fluently
40:42 29Method Review
29:32 30The Science of Friendship
39:14 31Why Do We Do This?
08:39Lesson Info
Demo: Grammar & Abstract Vocabulary
Let me show you what this looks like. This stuff is new I haven't actually gotten to use grammar before, so uh let's talk about three different sources of material we're gonna talk about using your grammar book, which is the main source I would suggest you start with um we're gonna talk about using laying eight, which is what? You know your own written material. We're gonna talk about a special sort of book series the a c mule book series, which I kind of just like a lot think they look like this um kind of leave it there for a second um they're they're kind of content arranged in a way that I really kind of that is very easy to use, but this sort of a special case let's first talk about your grammar because that's gonna be the main source of infant for you your grammar book. This is a shaman's outline. I like this book for french. The shop's outlines for french as we talked about in the very beginning grammar can be grammar books could be of all sorts of types you confined things that...
are designed for teachers where they don't give you any of the answers and you're just supposed to kind of they don't give you really good explanations they just kind of give you lots of dialogues and your teachers supposed to explain them to you don't use those they have books that are just kind of travel documents where they give you all these conversations and they say, well, we're not going to talk about grammar, but just kind of we're going to is going to say here's how you say I want some food, you want something that really explains the grammar and so the shops that line actually does that I'm a big fan of it. This is what it looks like on the inside. This is the very first thing is that like page one of french? This is your intro to french, and in this case they're talking about the article in french the french has three those loulan there's look there's law and then there's an l apostrophe that's used when there's a valve because it would be hard to say, lou, I'm me so they just called me lumber, and so they explain they give you an explanation, which is key. They say, you know, the definite article that accompanies masculine owns this little lot cos feminine noun lose use before masculine and feminine owns, beginning with the valve horse island each and they give me this explanation, they talk about things. This is sort of the standard grammar thing that we're all used to give you a lot of examples of song. They give you these examples of the apostrophe let me female friend libby sort used to spend so I'm gonna give you a few exceptions they say there's certain kinds of h is that are sort of special you don't pronounce them they don't go luke hey hole there is no hook in french ah and you would know this by now because you've already studied the french pronunciation thing uh but there is a loophole it's not just legal so they have these a few exceptions and so this is a standard sort of model they explained something and then they give you a whole bunch of drills. This is a sort of boring grammar book thing that they do it's I mean is it can be boring, but it is it's what you'll see and in the back of the book they'll give you examples and so that have blink of songs you have a blank shot down lasalle don't take so long and this is and the things he would know already the things that you would already have in your toolbox before you even get to this book our most of these words got soul is a boy you look so that like julie looks it's his type of to play boy play cat room what does this mean? The boy plays with a cat in the room? If you have a problem, if you don't quite know what's going on then google images not google images google translate, which is that translate dot google dot com we will go there again. Translate that google dot com is your friend is a wonderful friend. I love google translated I mean, I don't trust google translate but I love google translate and so if I have this sort of sentence, look at sanju avec le chateau on us alone I can put it right here. Look at seoul. You have a clear shot. His last shot, right? Yeah, the female cat ploys with pussy nice. Thank you. Google translate. Um, don salvo. Hilarious. Great. Um, so you can assume that this book is not sexual because it's a shop's outline so you can figure that that's probably an incorrect translation. Um, so you have this terrible translation, which is all right. And the nice thing about google translate is that you, khun mouse over each one of these words and it tells you which one's which boy look asshole plays with ju epic her policy. Where is that coming from? Last shot at dawn. The subtle they're putting living room is a real fine. I mean, you're not looking for exactly what's going on well, for what is generally happening here, and this shows you which part of the sentence is doing what and so if I want to learn this sentence which is doing all these things that I wanted to do, I mean it's, it's, it's a very good explanation of you know which article goes with which work were the words? Because I know they got some his masculine I've learned this already. I know that shut is a different form of the word shot it's not the masculine shots of feminine form of shut kristina's cringing at ha ha er and so long we have as a masculine which this is masculine where that we know already and so let's make some flash cards for this let's memorize this concept we only need one. Remember one or two examples of each thing let's take them. I'm goingto anke, I'm going to let's let's close all this out. Just so where? As if we had started on key from scratch and I'm going to add a card and I will see this window pop up at the type up here type used to be picture words and I'm gonna switch over to the all purpose card. The all purpose card is your friend forever. As soon as you can switch to the all purpose card, that means you have enough language to learn the rest of your language. I I only use this card on hungarian at this point as soon as I can switch to this I do it's complex has all sorts of little pieces that's ok? We're going to fill in all of them I'm using this sends a whole bunch of times so I'm going to fill in the full sentence I'm gonna start with the full sentence and do follow along here this is the model deck and you guys to follow along do this with me if you've actually done it, then you will be able to do it again. This is a process there is absolutely a learning curve here there's a part where you're just kind of like whoa is a lot of boxes here. What do I do with all these boxes? That's? Fine. As you progress with this you become very, very, very sort of fluent in the hunky interface you become very comfortable by saying okay, I know what I do now because there's only so many steps there's only so many things you do you write in a sentence you take out some words you put in some pictures the end you do it again, do it again, do it again and eventually the actual computer part of this process becomes second nature let's put this in the grass so remember this over here on max is option c to make that piece is I'm not sure for now just put in to see if you can't do it if you were learning french she would learn as we talked about yesterday uh you would learn how to type um look assholes you don't say hello this is our full sentence I'm gonna put this in capital up in the top right? We've already changed the type just for organization instead of putting this in the minimal pair deck I'm gonna put this in the everything else deck the way I did that is by clicking on that top right choosing everything else not minimal perry's but everything else and hitting choose and so now this is going to go in the right place. I now have this sentence now what I want to learn from the sentence well, we just discussed that in french you used the loo article for the french is the has a few different forms and the french though that works with masculine noun sze looks like carson is so I think lou is a good candidate. Um la is another thing that we're learning right now just that you use la for things that are feminine but there's a lot more that we can actually learn from here we can learn the word dong in the saloon you already have this not our book is not even covering it the book is not talking about how do you use the word? Don't we ready, khun? See it? We can see it used in context in the room, so we might as well learn dong he's playing with the cat. Why not learn a vic? We can learn that right now. It'll come back in a later chapter, the book we can look about me like I already know that I don't even learn that now. Um, and so we have a few options here, let's. First, start learning those. Um what I would suggest doing is that you have your full sentence here and you copy it, you way you do that is you select all of it. You copy with command, see on a mac on a pc that is control c for copy. So standard thing using any word document, I mean, any sort of text editing you hit command seat, you don't know that already. Now, you know, and that will save you minutes in minutes and minutes of your life eventually ours, and we're going to reuse this sentence. We're going let's say we're going to focus on in the beginning, we're going to paste it on the front, we're gonna click there once and paste command v on a mac and control v a pc cover this earlier in the morning about all these short cuts probably should take a screenshot of that and put it on my website as a pdf you can print out lucas now this front it says here I want an example with the word blanked out are missing so I'm gonna blank out this word I'm just going to select it it was luke I'm going to select that look and I'm going to put underscore underscore I like using two underscores it's just sort of a standard thing I do just for organization I don't wantto have exactly the number of underscores equal to the letters if I'm gonna blink out gossel I don't want to have like exactly one, two, three, four, five, six I don't want to give myself a clue as to exactly how many letters are in that word, so I do something very standard I just say how you always used to that's just my thing you can use whatever you want if you want underscore underscore than great if you want dash dash that's great if you want I don't know insert ward here that's fine I'll use underscoring the score because you have a clean shot on this alone this is my example for the world look and so on the back this is the back of the very first flash card the one that has the sentence and the picture and the blank in that sentence have look, this is a new word card and learning the new word of the french picture let's go find a picture I am not going to use google images but you will uh I'm going to use one of my course materials and I'm only doing that for legal reasons because silly boys playing with cat um what I have here I have a cat I have some yarn sure cats complete with your aunt I have a boy playing with the cat nice I have a cat playing with the r and these are all great pictures. I have a sort of play room and all of these things will work that's awesome. Thank you. Um so what do I choose for a picture? Which one do I choose isn't important and the answer is no it doesn't matter what picture you use here as long as it has anything to do with what we're talking about, it will be enough to ground you in the sentence in the story of the sentence and turn this from an abstract grammatical exercise of blank god's soul into oh yeah this is about a cat if I have this flash card which I will show you what it looks like this you don't need to get into this window I'm just showing this is a sample if I have this blanca social avec le chateau less I don't have this picture of a cat and I know that this means the boys playing with the cat in the room well I'm not I don't see a boy here I don't see a room here who cares? You know what the sentence meant? You have chosen a picture to just sort of tell you oh yeah yeah this is that story about the cat that's it so honestly the specific picture matters very, very little what matters is that you understand what the sentence means and that you choose some picture that has anything to do with the sentence someone use this picture of a cat actually, I'm gonna use the picture of the boy because I feel like I'm gonna use uh the sort of screen shoddy thing to make the picture a little smaller or just cause I want that boy because I mostly want to demonstrate that you can use screenshots to customise what kind of images you want. We covered this yesterday in terms of how to use screenshot ng on a mac there that is a keyboard combination that you khun set um but the standard keyboard combination I believe is control shift command for which I have reset to something else every said to their three so I can grab this kid I can grab whatever I want I can grab just his eyeball in either case I'm gonna grab that kid um the front definitions based word this is I don't need a base word I don't not talking about definitions yet this part I can leave empty and so so far all I have is blanca's o'clock shadow less I don't have a picture of a boy on the backside of that card I have the word look I have the full sentence written in here I don't need any extra information this is not some complex grammatical thing this is just the new word the and I'm going to make two cards which means that I will have one car that just says look without any context gonna have a car that looks just like this and your job is to think can I come up with any example in the entire french language that uses the word the you probably can and that's exactly you want and on the back of this card is going to give you that sentence with a picture of a boy and a picture of this sentence about the point playing with the cat so to make this car you're gonna have the advantage now you're gonna put that sentence back in and one of the things I like using is this copy and paste area I like just kind of having a sentence and reusing it over and over and over again the girl saw you ve clash at the salon and I like having this here so that every time I make a new card I can keep reusing this this copy and paste area stays put so every time I make a new card it's still there and it's just the sort of area that I can keep it's like a clipboard and so I'm gonna copy that from there I'm going to be all right it out once because I didn't write it out last time I'm gonna copy it I'm gonna which is command cnn back again control c on a pc I'm going to paste it in the full sentence and I'm gonna paste it on the front with the word blanco and this time I'm gonna use this to learn the word in doll I'm going to go blink blink I'm gonna put it on over here I'm gonna grab a picture of a room because we're gonna settle I'm gonna get rid of my boy and this point I have lucas on that shot blank this is how they learn the word in french this is going to be my in from now on my inn is gonna have to do with this boy playing with a cat I don't have any definitions to do here I don't have it just dawned goes on the back the full sentence goes here it's no extra info I'm gonna make two cards yes I want one car that looks like this I want a car that has dawn without any context, that's that card to and so I'm gonna make that card. I will click add or I can hit command. Enter pc that's control, enter done keeping my picture. I don't need it taken. You keep my picture. I'm gonna delete that for now. What else can we get? Well, we could get a few things for one. We probably should get last shot because we were trying to learn feminine and masculine, so we might as well get that just for completeness sake again, my sentence is still here in the copy and paste area, so I can select it on a mac or I would like to actually, it'll save you a quarter second basically, you had command a to select instead of actually dragging the mouths across it's a quarter second that you might as well have, so I had command ate it. Cut to select and command see to copy. I put in the full sentence command be put in the front command v blank out border on the back. Find a sentence of this time. I'm going to talk about last shot, and why not? I don't think this cat this's the cat, the boys playing with one of the things that you might notice my images are gigantic if you're using google images over here, your images are nice small and compact let's get rid of this cat this is the perfect size of image it's one of the other reasons I like using this version of google images as opposed to the big version of google images because when I search for something like like shit like dog these air all big bigger than I want notice that this is the french dog incidently I prefer the size that I get from normal google images from that other website from the small version this is the perfect size for an iphone especially we'll talk about getting this on your iphone in the next segment or your ipad or your android whatever. Anyway, this is like a sexual object blank shot douglas alone dog is not appropriate we need a cat we will grab this cat I will screen shot this cat because I can for me on the mac we covered this in segment too I think the tools of language learning you there is a stepping tool on a pc and a mac. There is a screenshot shortcut that will allow you to select whatever you want and stick it directly there. I'm only doing that to make the cat smaller because that cat's gigantic um this one's fine I have make two cards selected I will have a card with a just laugh alone now let's look at the sentence anything else I care about got so I've already learned I've learned all I might as well learn avec because why not? We're gonna do the same thing I'm going to go fast with this one because we've already done this now three times avec I'm going to delete it I'm gonna put this on the back I forgot to put it in the full sentence area so I'll put it there and I'm going to choose a different cat notice I'm changing the picture every time you don't have to but I find it very helpful um changing the picture and this is a perfect one will choose this guy um and if you were doing this from google images remember yours just searching for cat you're searching for whatever um let me find a good thing here if I'm searching for shot or cat, we're going to do kat for now notice that I can search in english at this point I'm not looking for what is the french sense of katniss I'm looking for can I find any image that has to do with lucas sold you a vehicular shot? Don't lash out so I concerts in english there's no problem here so I could just grab some random cat and stick it in you're just dragging and dropping or your you know, selecting copy image and pasty like a social vic the shots that's it I'm making two cards this point I've already made I think eight flashcards for this sentence I have learned for completely different concepts I've learned the two articles and french I've learned the doll inside of I've learned our vic now there's a question here which is what about julie but about to play the boys playing with the cat dollar settle now shoo is a special form of joy to play she way looks like this if I'm not mistaken it's done french in a long time um but how do you know that I mean you haven't covered this in your book yet remember we're in page one chapter one of our french book we don't know how to conjugated verbs so you don't actually know the jew is the special form of now you may have learned this already you may have learned that julie from the first six hundred twenty five words and so you may be in a position to do this but if you're not comfortable doing that you can just learn this as as a word on its own as a completely new vocabulary where june the word you use for the thing that k'nex a boy and a cat when they're playing you can do that you will learn more if you wait a little bit until you actually know how to congregate firms and so we'll cover that sort of next um, if I go back into the examples I saw in my in my textbook, I can look at example to and see the father prepares the dinner at the house, the parlor deanie, kalamazoo, kalamazoo. Is there anything new here that I actually care about? Not much. I could use this to learn, like, uh, for instance, alum is all, but this is not a very interesting sentence. I don't care much about this. I'm sure I'm gonna pick up somewhere else. And in terms of the concept that we're trying to learn, you know what about what is the article in french? I've already learned, lula, I can skip this. I will recognise this in the future. This is the sort of random drill that I do not need, so I could skip it. And that's, this is sort of the whole point is you could skip things you don't need. You only need to learn something once you're trying to learn it enough so that you can recognise it in a new context, you're not trying to drill it until you mastered it. It's not gonna work that way. So we look at the next example a professor, the professor on sanya, least oir long glacier called la geography philosophy, the professor teaches history english geography and philosophy he teaches everything he's the best professor in the world lew professor liu this is old news we ready? No this all saying you to teach well okay I mean, we aren't ready for verbs yet this isn't what we're talking about. We're talking about articles. Oh, that's a new article leastwise great. This is something new. This is something worth learning as soon as you encounter something new and worth learning learning so we'll take that and we'll take that it will only take a little bit of it. I mean, this is our first full sentence this professor teaches everything he's really awesome, but we don't need him to teach everything we're gonna write this in the copy and paste area uh least twelve and how buddy just teaches history you can use thes these sentences as you wish remember, you are teaching yourself this language and so I don't need him just teach english and geography philosophy so I don't I can skip that if I want him to. I can include that because actually there is a lovely word in there but I want you to be flexible with this stuff. I want you to be able to just teach yourself whatever you want. Um the only reason I'm really including this in this case is because I really like the word and at the end of the sentence haven't learned and yet in french might as well learn might as well learn and they also get all this bonus stuff jail coffee I know enough from english that that's probably means geography and it'll kind of help me familiarize myself afraid spelling life philosophy I feel so full philosophy um so there's a good sentence I have a few things to learn from here so I'll write that in I'm gonna copy it gonna dump it in the full sentence that's command see to copy command v to paste command v to paste the pc that's control c control the control of the and I'm gonna grab this leastwise this look I'm gonna put a space in just a trip myself up I'm not going to go underscore underscore directly into east allowed because that basically tells me the answer oh yeah that's the thing that just an apostrophe put space in just a screwed with screw with myself basically look apostrophe is the thing I'm trying to learn here I will grab some some picture of a professor if I was doing this normally if I didn't have any legal issues with google images which I probably should close at this point I would go to google images and I would just type in professor I would type in history I would type in student I would tie pin college I would do all this in english because it saves me time my job is not to find what is the most french of french professors I've already done this my job is to figure out what some picture that has something to do with this please how's that how's that places everyone I can see a few people topping philly furiously over there we good for did that happen to quickly? We're good we're up for good aid following everything good right? Nice nice we've nailed the tempo um so I'm not going to search google images but I want you to do because of legal stuff but I just realized you could search for whatever you want I mean really anything as long as it has something to do with professors and history and teachers and whatever you can have a picture of a pencil a textbook and you can actually type in pencil textbook teacher whiteboard, blackboard school any of these words will work for the sentence. I mean, any picture any picture of anything to do with any of this? So I'm gonna choose some of these I have a picture of book I have a picture of some desks thank you deep this is great deep has been my picture guru for this thing my legal picture guru so let's see professor is teaching history will grab a picture of a map because that was one of my options I could have just typed in google map um well grab this map of ireland grab a small one I will just drag and drop it's gonna be gigantic. I know it's gonna be gigantic. Alright? That's fine. Um, little fisa all saying you least wire professor teaches history. I have this map of ireland or whatever I'm gonna put in luke, come to me two cards. This is all great. So my cards like gonna have this is what it's gonna look like my lip of his own sandy blank east wound on the back side of that card is gonna put exactly what I want to have that card you get of the picture. Um but I'm also going to use this thing to learn the word and my french vocabulary is broadening out quite a bit. I have now learned the basic word and which is the word I'm gonna counter all over the place I'm gonna put that over here. I'm gonna copy that on the full sentence and what is my and going to look like my aunt's gonna look like I guess, that classroom with the chairs because these are all the places that professor teachers he's teaching history in english and geography and philosophy and end this is my and my and apparently looks like a chair, my french and forever will be a chair, a set of chairs, that's just fine that's exactly what I want it's much more interesting than just kind of an abstract this is end in french so I'll make that card remember the ad a car you hit command enter or in a pc control entered so that's all well and good this is how you use textbooks this is how you use drills in textbooks but drills and textbooks are kind of a pain because you have to send them into google translate to really figure out things unless you know enough of the words in them which you might in french and you probably won't in mandarin you kind of have to go to google translate and see which word is doing which so my favorite thing in terms of textbooks or when they really get into example sentences here's another excerpt from the shaman outline they say it is giving you ah niu grammar rules saying the definite article is used with an infinitives and adjectives are used as abstract now this is a difference between english and french you have louis lebeau if you translate each word individual you have the laughter is good for the health mental lily if the laughter abel is good beulah for the salty health multilayered mental but this isn't the laughter is good for the health this is laughter is good for health english doesn't use the article french does this is a place where you would be tempted to say the a boom pole santino died you were just sort of directly translating french english to french in your head and so you need to sort of convinced yourself that you actually need the article all over the place and you needed for things that don't have a gender. He is a verb, I mean, in this context and he was a noun for some reason you're saying, you know, to laugh and they stick an article in front of it so let's learn that. And the nice thing about these sentences is that since they're already translated, you can just use them directly. You don't need to do this whole google translate step it's just really handy on and we're gonna also use this forward order because last santi montel, the health mental is not how you would say it in english. This is a new world order. This is a sense that in french you stick the adjective after the noun for some crazy reason that crazy reason is that's the way you say it so let's, take that follow along with me do this one in french because it's just the same thing in any other language. We're gonna put this in the copy and paste area luli able salty it looks like this l e r I r e s t o n yo u r remember this a is option e e on a mac on the pc then you have to look at that link that fancy keyboard link tiny u r l slash fancy keyboard in the syllabus get the syllabus it's going to keep nagging you guys um the full sentence I'm gonna paste it here I'm gonna paste it here um I'm trying to teach myself not to say see they don't put out sometime on time I've just learned a new rules saying that if I want to learn an infinitive in french and I want to use it in this way of saying that laughter is good then all I have to do instead of trying to memorize that to laugh and laughter are two different words in french it's just the same word toe laugh the laughter you I just need to stick an article in front handy I've just picked up two words so I'm gonna teach myself that lou goes right there how do I say that laughter is good for health lily a ballpark salty class auntie now in this case do I make two cards card one let's finish out card one card one is gonna have a picture of laughing which I can search on google images for laugh for health for laughter for to laugh for anything anything with smiley people it's fine there's health you know laughing people great we'll try these laughing people these are all healthy laughing people this is table lovey lou a bamboo class on time on time is going to be my example for how you use verbs as announce in french ends it's going to make this flash card blank a bomb put out some time it's a really lovely flash card on the backside of that flash card I'm gonna have a look, but the other question is do I want this flash card? Do I want a flash car that just says luke, when I just made one and generally the answer to that is no if I already have a flash car that looks identical to this, I usually skip making it. I don't find it very useful tohave, but had a ton of different lose floating around remember that once you're right, you're right. If I can come up with any example for this flash card for the answer, if I could come up with one example for the word the in french I win, why should I have to quiz myself on that seven hundred times? So I don't, and so in this case, this last field, this make two cards thing, this the question being asked here is, do I want a flash car that just says lou on it? And I already have one, so the answer that is no way I'm gonna delete everything out of that box so I'm only going to make one flash card here and it's gonna have blank the use able I'm gonna have that flash card and I'm gonna use this sentence again had a copy it would put a full sentence here put full sense up here and I'm gonna use this to teach myself about french uh word order because french word order is weird it's not what I expected to be in this case local you the laughter ok abel is good beulah for thus is all good this is basically one for one english french to english like word order is perfectly fine for the health mental what that's not what I expect and as soon as I get something I do not expect that's when I want to actually learn it and so in this case all I have to do is take out one of these words I can take out some tea I could take that non time christina which should I choose random great multilayered it is all right my job is to put montel back into this sentence in the right spot no here a bone full asante the laughter is good for the health oh what kind of health? Montel health where's ago well, it goes after something and this is actually the full file we'll change the image will put in this this image of a healthy heads this's actually done already I have a sentence with the word missing. I have the full sentence here already and I have the word I'm sticking in with this is gonna look like is this we'll see if I can make the pictures lawler or something bigger? Uh, let's take a smaller picture of a gonna make this head really small so you can all see it ignore what I'm doing for a second just lowering the size of my head be smaller head great. Okay, this is what your flashcards gonna look like on the front. Dante, I have montel and read. I know that I don't see a blank in the sentence. There is no fill in the blank, so it can't be that I need to find out what word fits in the blank because there's no, blake so it must be that I need to insert this word into the sentence somewhere on on the back side of this card you're just going to see this just to be clear, I'm gonna put some spaces in here, you're going to see this and that is the only card you make for word order again, this make two cards thing, you don't have anything in the back, there is no card to make, so this should be blake, if you're learning word order, this should be blank, we're gonna make that car you could also re use this for all sorts of things you could use this to learn the word bowl good laughter is good for your mental health. You could learn to use this to learn the word pool for it is good for your health and if you wanted, you could use this to learn the word is now I'm not I mean, you can do this and this is the sort of thing you would do especially the beginning in the beginning stages you just taking everything I mean, why not? You have so much to learn at the beginning it's so much fun actually the beginning just like I could learn everything look at this sentence I have ten things learn from the sense we've already made, like twenty flashcards out of two sentences but let's say later on just because I want to give you an example of the word form card we learned that x which looks just like this is the french infinitive for to be and that a is the first person I started the third person singular of to be is he is a student. Teo teo, in fact, I think we already encounter this with the last sentence with with the cat well, that, um was it what did we think we did? Um, no, we didn't no that's our first, eh is our first encounter with to be in french on dh so we could learn it without anything, we could learn it as just a straight fill in the blank, but let's say we're in a later chapter in the book, and the book says we're going to now encounter the word eta we're going to counter the six forms of eta in french who's that who's that all these things in this case, I want to show you a word form card. This is how you'd make it you're going to grab a picture which in this case I'm going to grab this doctor's saying yes, she is the one saying that laughter is good for your health, okay, because why not remember you could choose anything. These pictures are not important, it's just important that you have a picture. Not that you have found the right picture for it to be. But for now this doctor is not going to be my to be in french for ever and ever. The laughter is good for health. And so this is my is able and who's the base word form of this word. This is the infinitive. This is what my textbook is telling me remember, I'm learning this from my textbook. And I'm only doing this sort of early because it's already here and I don't want to sort of go looking through this book to find a different example um be able to last the full sentences down here as always and I will make two cards this sentence is not gonna look like this you're gonna have one we'll make the doctor smaller again all right, dr we're gonna make you anybody I'm only doing this so you can see everything on my screen at the same time so you could ignore what I just did this is what that what that flash card is going to look like you're gonna have your blank bone pulled by sante mon tyler you're gonna have eta in red, you will have a fill in the blank you know that there is a blank to fill and that it was somehow relates to that blank and your job is to spit out a lease is a word from card and if you wanted to if you have this extra in from the back oh god, I'm gonna quiz myself in my own french thing actually usually it's usually we have pie m you are so we have you see, I can't believe I'm quizzing myself on french on live is awesome uh what is the other one you have I we news some not now owns some no it's true is it this one there's the other one I believe it's this one haven't um uh what is it, ella? No soul I remember I think unless the chat room tells a completely wrong about this one I much like not quite confident about um god it's been forever since french you can put congregation charts in the backs of your cards and what that does is it gives you it looks all the same it looks like he'll blank born full assault team on time. Let me know if the chatroom starts complaining about that one please and he's in french revue and on the back of your flash card, you're going to see this you're going to see the base word for I mean the word the word you're looking for love you blank born cool assault team on time you're going to find the sentence, then you're gonna have a little handy conjugation chart to see where it fits in that's really kind of need I mean, it lets you see where your word is in that context of those six forms of the word. So let me show you some other forms uh other ways you're gonna get this information and again that we have all these example sentences for the definite article being used with infinitives I don't need all of them, I can take whatever I want in this case, this is enough to teach me that if I can use a definite article, I can say that to laugh in french. And it means laughter. And so I don't need to do it again with something else with another example. If I find something else interesting in these examples, aiken, take them. Of course, any time you find something interesting, take it always, but you don't need to. If you find something that is just review of something, anytime you see if that it's just review, skip it.
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
Nephele Tempest
I really enjoyed this course. Gabe has a terrific, easy teaching style that's entertaining and absorbing to the point where I'm conscious of having gone through the course a little too fast. I am looking forward to going back through it a little more slowly to catch any tidbits I missed, but even without that I feel I have so many new tools to apply to language learning and I can't wait to get started. I really appreciate that he also went over how to tackle a language you've already learned in the past but have not retained to the level you'd like, as well as how to start a brand new language from scratch. I hope to do both with much greater success than my previous attempts.
user-278c98
Worth every penny. Despite the title, you'll learn far more than how to become fluent in a language -- you'll learn how to learn anything you want! Gabe is a great presentational speaker, articulate and captivating. The foundation of the course is about how to set a concrete and measurable goal, learn effectively, and set yourself up for success. This course addresses forming new habits within the constraints of your current life, making progress when you don't feel motivated, and how to recover from setbacks like getting off-track or when you just don't grasp a concept--these topics are often missing from other learning courses so students flounder as soon as they stray from the formula. Building on all these fundamentals, Gabe then offers specific techniques and tools for language learning. Excellent course!
a Creativelive Student
I really wasn't expecting to learn a whole lot of new things with this course but I feel like I have come away with so much more then just how to learn a language. The science on how our mind and memory work was really interesting and also very applicable to other parts of my life. Along with this course, I purchased Gabriel's pronunciation trainer which I also highly recommend. I never thought about the pronunciation of a language as a separate part and I feel like learning this first is already greatly improving my understanding of my goal language. I have tried to learn another language many times only to either give up from frustration or get bored with the program I'm using. This course and Gabriel's method of learning a language have me so excited that this time will be the time I succeed. I can't wait to start using the word list once that is available and to start creating my own. Thank you so much for such a great course.