how I LEARNED A LANGUAGE by myself WITHOUT STUDYING it | language tips from a POLYGLOT

Thank you, guys! Tulki for sponsoring this video. It's been more than a year since I filmed my most viral video titled "How I Learned English by Myself for Free Without Studying It: Language Learning Tips from a Polyglot." After a year and a half, I realized some of the mistakes that I did in the beginning. Also, if you compare my English skills now versus back then, I think I improved quite a lot. I feel like I can express myself, my thoughts, and my feelings more accurately.

So today, I want to introduce a better and updated origin of the method that I showed on how to learn a new language on your own. So, let's get started! But before starting, I want to give a disclaimer: relying only on this method in the very, very beginning of your language journey might not be the best choice. Therefore, if you want to give this a try, I would recommend reaching at least A2 level of fluency in your target language. But basically, reaching A2 level is not that hard, and you can get there in about a month or two.

You can, of course, use this method from the beginning, but I personally would not recommend it. There’s some scientific data proving this method; some people commented on it, but I don’t know it. So, this method worked for me but might not work for you. Just take it as a grain of salt. You can use this method for any other languages, but since I used this method in order to learn English, let's talk about my English background.

I took English classes as my main foreign language till high school. In high school, I took German, so I wasn’t really getting English lessons in school, and I didn’t get any special education when it comes to English. Also, I didn’t attend an English international school. Most of my friends who are fluent in English went to English international schools, so they were taught every lesson in English, but that wasn’t the case for me. I just basically went to regular schools that weren’t really good at teaching English.

In the majority of the countries, English is a mandatory choice, but not everyone can speak English fluently. I actually have a video where I explained details about it. But basically, we do too much input. The education system relies on too much input, and we cannot do much output in lessons. For example, we always listen and read things, but not every school really approaches more talking, more writing, and expressing yourself type of activities, which I understand because there are a lot of people in one class. If everybody had a chance to talk and express themselves and do more output, it probably cannot be, you know, fit into a regular school time schedule. I think so.

I do understand it; however, if you want to learn a language on your own, we should look back to the methods that didn’t work for us and then improve those methods and become better with them. Therefore, my method relies more on doing output rather than input. According to my favorite books' author, Kawasaki, he has two books called "Input Dictionary" and "Output Dictionary," where he explains how to do effective inputs and outputs. He explains that the golden ratio of input and output is three to seven, so thirty percent input and seventy percent output. I do relate on that quite a lot.

However, in the very early stages of learning a language, input is more important than doing output. In order to do quality output, you need to do enough amount of input in the beginning. All these things might not make sense right now, but I'm going to explain in detail. So, let's begin!

So now let's talk about how to become fluent faster, and let's talk about the cons of this method. Learning a language can be really hard if you do all these things on your own. Especially, this method really relies on yourself, so you need to be really disciplined, and you need to really do all these things. The best way to improve much faster is giving solid feedback to yourself each time. But if you do it yourself, you might not be able to give solid feedback each time because it would be really objective; it would be more subjective.

The cons of this method is that when you learn something wrongly, you are much likely to do that mistake over and over and over again. I was mispronouncing the same words repeatedly, like "foreign." I was saying "foreigner," and like "purpose," I was saying "propose" or something. I only realized that because of you guys; you guys commented that my pronunciation was wrong. I didn’t have a YouTube channel; if I didn’t have native speaker friends, I don’t think I would be able to realize my mistakes.

So, it is always important to get actual feedback from other people. The biggest con of this method is not getting solid feedback. You give yourself feedback, but you might not know your mistakes. Doing mistakes is not a problem, but when you learn something wrongly in the beginning, it can be really hard to fix it afterward. Therefore, I recommend today's sponsor, italki. It is an amazing platform to learn languages with native speakers. There are more than 150 languages you can choose from, so be sure that you can find your target language on italki.

In these 150 languages, you can take one-on-one lessons with native speakers. I didn’t know italki existed, and I didn’t know any language apps or platforms. I wish I knew in the beginning because it would have been much easier for me to get better and to improve and learn the language. I'm not saying this only because it's a sponsorship; I'm saying this truly because I do believe that this platform is an amazing platform to learn languages and to practice and to get solid feedback.

You can find a bunch of native speakers, and the great thing is you don’t need to stick to a schedule. You can arrange your schedule, and let’s say you didn’t like a teacher; you can choose other teachers and try out different people with different teaching methods to find out who suits you. So let’s say you’re looking for a teacher. You can use this filter and choose the English language filter so that it will show you teachers or native speakers in English who can teach you English.

You can click on the teacher's profiles and learn more about them, their teaching styles, and then decide which teacher you want to continue with. You can pay per lesson; therefore, there is no commitment. If you didn’t like something or if you want to give it a try and try different methods, of course, you can always do that. They offer three trial lessons for a three-trial account, up to fifty percent off. Italki offers free italki community practice; you can practice your English with native speakers and also do free practices. Sign up for italki for free from the link down in the description below, and also they offer coupons and rewards from time to time. Don't forget to check them out, and thank you, guys! Tulki for sponsoring this video.

Before starting to learn a new language, I think it is important to specify your goals because according to your goal, the method that you will use will really change. My only goal to learn English back then was following a YouTuber called James Charles. "Hi sisters!" I was a huge fan of him, and I wanted to understand his videos, and that was the only reason why I wanted to learn English.

For me, formal talking or grammar was not that important to be honest because I wasn’t planning to use this for any professional occasion. Because I had a clear goal of learning English, it really helped me through the journey. When you don’t have a goal, you cannot test yourself very much. You know, if you have a goal point, you can compare your current level and then see what you need to do in order to reach this level. If you don’t have a clear vision, you cannot really track your process and then give yourself great feedback. Also, the methods that you will use will change.

Therefore, for starting to learn a language, it might not be English at all. It is important to think about what your actual goal is. Some people might want to learn a language for school or education purposes, or maybe business purposes, and some people only want to learn a language for fun. Both of them are amazing reasons; you just need to know what you want to do.

Okay, so the step one will be to choose what to watch. If you don’t know, I learn English by watching YouTube videos. I said input in the beginning is crucial. Sound natural and sound more like a native. I'm not saying that I sound like a native whatsoever, but by watching YouTube videos, you will most likely hear more daily conversations, especially in vlogs where people talk about their daily lives.

Like lifestyle creators, I would recommend watching their videos, especially English native speaker lifestyle YouTubers because they talk about their days, what they’re gonna do, how they’re feeling. These days, today was supposed to be my rest day, but feeling a little sore, so I just wanted to do a little bit of like light workouts. They update you about their life, and I feel like in those types of videos, you can catch up so many phrases that native speakers use in their daily life.

If you don’t enjoy lifestyle-type creators, you might also check Netflix or maybe other TV series or movies, or maybe songs—whatever you enjoy—but the important thing is to enjoy the process. The main goal of my method is to enjoy the process so that it won’t be studying. You know, you’re just gonna watch YouTube videos, but with a better mindset, and I don’t think that it's really studying, to be honest.

Step two is to watch videos at normal speed with subtitles. Try to understand what they’re saying instead of only watching. When you’re watching a video, truly concentrate on that video and try to read subtitles and try to understand what they’re talking about. Watch every day for at least an hour to make it a habit and make it a part of your day. You need to make the new language a part of your day, and you need to practice every day. You know, day by day, you will realize that you understand more and more and more, and with the time, you will not need subtitles at all.

Consume media only in your target language. It might not be really possible for you to do, especially if you have schoolwork to do, but at least try to consume more media in your target language. It can be Japanese, it can be Korean, it can be, I don’t know, like Arabic or something, and try to consume as much media as possible in your target language. Even if you don’t understand it, you are able to understand what they’re saying in a video or podcast or movie subtitles.

Move on to the next step. The third step will be to watch videos without subtitles at least for an hour every day. We needed enough input in order to understand videos without subtitles. Now it’s time to do more output. After watching every single video or a movie or a podcast episode, try to explain it to yourself. Try to summarize it to yourself, and when doing all these, try to summarize them in your own words. This is crucial!

Do not use any translator because you will actively try to recall some of the words and some of the meanings, and this is a crucial step in becoming fluent and sounding natural in your target language. It’s really convenient to translate immediately, but you need to give yourself a bit of time to think about the words that you know or you don’t know.

You need to come up with them, but if you cannot really find a word after, like, maybe thinking in a couple of minutes, you can, of course, look it up, and then you can maybe create a Notion page and add your vocabulary list or something. Talk to yourself in your daily life; it might sound crazy, but I was always talking to myself. I was trying to explain different circumstances to myself. Like I was kind of acting like I have a friend who I talk to in English, and I was trying to do some daily conversations with myself, which is crazy. But in my previous videos, I talked about it, and a lot of people were doing this method too, so I'm not the only crazy one.

But you can do it. Try to talk to yourself. Like, I remember looking into the mirror; I was doing my makeup, and I was acting like I'm a beauty guru, and I was explaining the whole makeup steps in English to myself. I was alone in my room; that’s how I learned English, and it works! So, I recommend that when you say something out loud, try to think, "How can I say this in my target language?" If you don't know, look it up because that’s the sentence that you said in your daily life, and it will probably be necessary in your target language too.

So, it is actually a great way of studying, you know, just mimicking yourself, like how you talk in your main language and then trying to say it in your target language. When it comes to translators, I think they're not evil or anything; it always depends on how you use them. It’s really convenient to look and search it up on translator immediately, but most of the time, growth doesn’t come from a place of comfort. Oh, it sounds cheesy, but I think it's true when you're able to understand videos without subs, and you are crazy enough to talk to yourself every day and made it a habit. Move on to the next step!

The fourth step will be to read in your target language. If you don’t read, excuse me, what are you doing with your life? Please start reading immediately! Even if reading is not your habit, maybe, which is a shame—anyway, I'm just kidding—you can read whatever you would like to. It doesn't have to be very complicated stuff. Even in the beginning, if you're not able to really understand, you can even read kids' books.

There are so many nice and good kids' books that you can read in your target language, and it’s actually really fun to understand the book in a language that is not your mother tongue. One great thing about reading is that oftentimes in books, they use more complicated sentence structures that are not really used in daily life, so it will really help you improve your vocabulary and also maybe your grammar. It will also teach you how to express yourself better in your target language in daily life.

I feel like people use the same words again and again, but if you want to really improve, I think reading books is crucial, and I think I should read more books in German and also in English to improve my language skills even more. After reading every chapter, of course, after doing inputs, we always need to do outputs. Therefore, summarize a chapter or anything in your own words while reading some books or newspapers or online news.

After watching an hour of videos without subs every day, the step five will be speeding up the videos to 1.25 to 1.5. The important thing about this step is that oftentimes, native speakers talk really fast. Like, they don’t talk slowly, therefore, if you get used to the faster version in videos, you’ll easily understand native speakers. It’ll take a bit of time to get used to it, and some people do not enjoy it at all, but I personally love watching videos at triple speeds or so because I get bored easily, so speeding up things really helps.

Do this method at least for a year, for an entire year, every day. Step six will be to continue for more than a year. You might think a year—it’s gonna take me a year! Excuse me? It took you multiple years in school and you couldn’t learn it. Now I’m introducing you a method where you can learn in about a year maybe, or two. Of course, you cannot learn and become super fluent in a language in a couple of weeks or so. If you hear everything, you might be able to become fluent in a couple of months—I don’t know; there are some people that can do it.

In my life, learning a language is not the main focus of my life. It’s a part of my life. The main goal of this method is enjoying the process, and when you enjoy the process, actually, time flies. Obviously, in a year, you won’t sound like a native. I think I don’t sound like a native even now; it’s been how many years? I don’t know, two, three or so. But when you compare it to the beginning, I think I improved, and I'm improving more and more day by day.

Thinking about this method, I feel like if I didn’t have a YouTube channel and if I didn’t—we didn’t have a weekly podcast, "Milliseconds Apart," where actually we don’t do it weekly—we’ve been lacking consistency these days. However, if I had native speaker friends like Matt and Izzy, and if I weren’t talking to them every week, you know, doing Zoom calls every week, an hour or so, I don’t think I could improve this much. I’m pretty comfortable when it comes to English.

I read quite a lot of English books, I have a lot of meetings, I need to write a lot of mails, and also, my uni is also in English now. Learning English gave me so many opportunities: like, it gave me a job, got into uni, and I made a lot of friends, even like some relationships. Not only English, but any other language can give you so many opportunities. You can meet a bunch of people.

It says that everybody knows English these days; you don’t need to learn any other languages. No! If you want to truly communicate with a person, talk to them in their mother tongue. They would really appreciate it, and you can connect with them deeply. Even though my only goal was to understand James Charles, I am really glad that I did that, and I spent a lot of time consuming English media and trying to talk to myself. I’m really proud of myself for doing that, and I’m in a place where I couldn’t imagine a couple of years ago. Oh, I’m gonna cry these days, but anyway, I’m so glad that I learned English.

I hope you enjoy your language journey too, and see you in my next video. Bye! [Music]