Teach Yourself a Language in 15 Minutes a Day: Step-by-Step Demonstration

Hello everybody. This video is a direct follow-up to the previous one in which I mentioned that it was possible to learn a language by studying 15 minutes a day, every day, systematically, in about the course of a year. So, uh, one person put in the comments there that they'd like to see a sample of that, and two people wrote to me to say they'd really like that. So, this video may be about 20, 25 minutes long if I, uh, expound too much on other things.

But in the heart of it will be a sample demonstration of how I would use an Assimil method to go about learning a language by studying it in a concentrated 15-minute time block. Assimil, as I mentioned before, is probably the—if you have polyglotism—this is your best friend. Assimil is a French company that has books like this for about maybe 60 different languages. They're all in French originally, which is the reason why I say you should learn French as one of your very first languages, because that will give you access to all of these other books.

So what I'm going to do now is embark upon a 15-minute lesson. I will make sure before I get started that I have all the things that I need: the book itself, a pencil for taking notes, I have audio on a little player, I have a glass of water because, um, I'm going to be talking a lot, I might get thirsty.

If you need reading glasses to see, or a watch to time yourself with, you might want to have a cat on your lap. You could do it without a cat if you don't have a cat available, but if you have one, the comfort that you get from a feline friend feeling assistant makes you focus a little bit better. So, you might be able to do this with a dog or some other furry animal, but ideally, if you want to succeed, you should get a cat. You want to go to the bathroom beforehand, you want to get in a quiet, focused place.

Notice I do not have either a computer or a cell phone here in front of me. Assimil now makes materials for putting these things on these devices; you might want to explore that. But I think it's better to not have the risk of distraction from incoming messages, emails, or anything like that.

So, all that is by way of preamble. I'm going to demonstrate how I went about doing a 15-minute lesson like this. It is not written in stone. I would highly recommend, if you're interested in this, that you copy somebody's procedure as I'm going to show you, and then when you're comfortable with it, you experiment with it and you adapt it as needed.

Assimil itself recommends studying half an hour a day and getting through one of their manuals in about six months, so it's about the same timeframe as I say—15 minutes a day for about a year. I don't think you would necessarily need a year; I think you could do it within a year's space.

So, um, the first thing I'm going to do is I am going to start the 15-minute lesson. I am going to put in my earphones, and again, this is a demonstration lesson. I'm not—French is something that I've been learning for going on 50 years; I'm not really a beginner here—but I'm going to start with lesson 29, which is the beginning of the fifth week, and act as if this were a new language to me, and this is the way that I would go about learning a new language like this.

So, the first thing I'm going to do before I go on to this, I've been studying now for four weeks; this is the beginning of my fifth week. So, I should have an idea of how the language works. I've listened to some other things. The Assimil comes with the book, which has bilingual text. You'll see in a moment, and the audio is only in French. The audio, unfortunately, does have gaps in it, so I have—as in a previous video—I have truncated the silence in the gaps.

Lesson 29, which I'm going to do, was one minute and 35 seconds; it is now 54 seconds, so I have saved 39 seconds, and I'm going to do this multiple times so you can see you can save several minutes in a 15-minute time block by running the audio through the, um, the truncate silence function first.

Okay, so the first thing we're going to do is I’m going to do what I call blind shadowing. That is, I'm pretending I have never seen the text before, and I am going to just try to speak it along with the sound and do the best I can. I might try to falter and stumble a little bit, but I can't—really finish is something that's very natural to me.

But this would be the whole thing would be a more hesitant. But I think it makes a better demonstration to do it in a more flowing fashion. So, I am going to now listen and repeat simultaneously with the French text. It's 54 seconds long. If you don't know French, bear with me for that, then we'll see the text together and we'll learn what it says.

Okay, so what I'm doing is I'm pretending that I have not studied the lesson before. I have studied the preceding 28 lessons, so I'm seeing now based on what I've learned how much of this I will understand on my own. Okay, I'm going to try to do the best that I can to understand what I'm saying as I say it as if I've never said it before.

So here I go with the blind shadowing, and this is the beginning of the 15-minute lesson. So I'm going to keep track with the stopwatch throughout this, so we'll see if it's about 15 minutes at the end. When you're actually doing this, you obviously don't need to be tracking every single step, but this is just to see if it's about 15 minutes. Okay, so here I go. A kilo is—

Okay, so I have just gone over the lesson for the first time by listening to it as if I've never heard it before. I've never done this before; hopefully I would understand at least 50 percent of what I'm saying, perhaps 60 or something like that along this lines. So, now the next step is to do this again by looking at the text.

So in the second step, what I'm going to do is I'm going to shadow that same text again, but I am going to look at—I’m going to shadow French, I'm going to say French—but I am going to read the English text completely so I will get a complete global understanding of what I'm saying as I say it.

Okay, so if I go here, and now I'm going to do this lesson again. I'm going to say French, I'm going to listen to French, but I am going to read the English and get a global understanding. “Qu’est-ce que tu préfères?” Okay, so now I have gone over the text, and I understand globally because I read it in English as I was saying in French what I said as I was saying it.

So now I should have perhaps a 70, much higher understanding, maybe 80, 90. But let me now do it a third time as I read the French, and with my ears, I will say the French with my eyes, but I will track it with both fingers. And whenever I'm even slightly unsure of what I'm doing, I will look over here, and that way I will understand clearly what I'm saying—“Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

Now I have shadowed this text three times: first blind, that is, not looking at it, then while reading the English so I understand thoroughly what's going on, and now by listening and reading so I see what the specific words that I'm saying.

Okay, so now I am not going to shadow it. The third step or the fourth step now is I am going to read through the French text and make reference to the English text and also look at all the notes. This is the step where I'm really learning the lesson, and this is the one that's going to take the longest.

Okay, so here I go: “Quelle est ta montre préférée?” And I'm noting a lot myself. Again, I’ve seen the inversion order from English—“Quelle de ces montres préfères-tu?” Which of these watches do you prefer? “Luca, quel est préféré?” Which one of these watches do you prefer? “Lucky, I will prefer.”

“Quel” is used to discover a person's choice or preferences. Okay, so that's the first explanation I have here, and then, oh no one, so this tells me to go to the next review lesson and look at the more detailed notes there explaining.

So how am I, how come I'm—how am I comparing adjectives? Okay, English can do it by adding “-er” or “-est”, “more” or “most”. French only has one way—adding “plus” and “moins” before the adjectives. You call “plus grand” is “bigger.”

Okay, so I have a better understanding of comparing. “L’ami” is a singular noun despite the final “s”, like English “series” means franchise. A few such singular—has no plural form. Okay, just understanding. “Bof” means little friend. Ha ha, “trois” not “trois”.

You're probably beginning to feel the position of the adjectives in French by now—you usually place it after the noun. Here it places before. Okay, okay, some things you'll soon be able to position the adjectives automatically, I hope so please.

Okay, so this is the humor of the Assimil method. This is funny. I forgot. “Féminins” is the feminine form. “Bell” we put this before the noun. There's a third form, okay. “Je n’en” means no difference between “bell” and “beau.” I’ll make a note here; that's kind of complicated, but I'll put a note here so next time I review this, I'll look at that and see if that makes more sense.

“Beige”, okay, like “pain.” Here’s the conjugations: note 6—term of affection, darling. French use endearments less discriminate than British. “Je n’appelle” won’t call you that, okay? “Mon chéri” is apple, “la calva.” Which of these apples?

Okay, “la calva.” Note four—gotta go back to the next lesson. What's this about? “Ah vu” and “tu.” Thus far, I've only seen “vu.” Okay, we learned the polite way of saying “vous,” “strangers.” The other form “tu” like “thou.” The French themselves sometimes difficulty when knowing to use it, especially between different generations.

“Tu” is almost always used for family, friends, small young children, but young people use it systematically when talking to each other. Okay, I'll make a note about this too to see when I next review it. Maybe that'll be clearer to me.

Okay, let's do close the biggest one, and then there's exercises. Okay, I saw that in the previous lesson, there's no new vocabulary here—just reworking these phrases using words that I saw in earlier lessons.

Okay, I understand that. “Quelle est le plus lourd de ces deux?” So that would be “le local.” That's right, okay? So this exercise is longer than the last one, set exercise. Okay, “Dany est vieux. Ils ont un bel appartement et une grande maison.” Okay, they have the same weight.

It's only “même pas” of course, not “même.” Guess what? They think of his new girlfriend. That wasn’t to help. Alright, so now stop commentary.

So now I have gone through the text in detail. I've looked at all the notes. I've read through what they told me. I've checked in the review sections. I should have a really good idea of what I am saying now, what I'm reading, or saying.

I would now, depending on how hard I am finding this, I can do one of two things: I can try, I can read it again and make sure that that flows—that's probably always a good idea—and then after I read it again, I'm going to blind shadow it once more, but this time I should be able to understand it.

So, let's come back over here. I'm going to read the lesson and see how much I understand. I'm going to see—I’ll let myself go over to the right-hand side page if I need to—but I’m going to try not to. I'm going to try to just stay on the left-hand side of the page. And again, this is a demonstration; I’m pretending I’m a beginner. I don't need to go over to the right, but I'm going to try to do so occasionally just to show how the time would be used.

Okay. Alright, so, uh, I'm pretending that I'm learning the language having gone over this three or four times. Now I just looked at the notes, just read it. I should probably feel like, “Oh, there's one or two points that are unclear. I'm not quite sure if I get it. I'm not sure if I said those words correctly,” right? But I should feel pretty good about this right now. I should feel like I've learned this lesson by looking at the words.

Let me try one more time to blind shadow again and see how I would feel if I did just the, uh, just the words again. So, I'm going to blind shadow it. Okay, so I'm going to stop this, and that's 10 minutes exactly. A third, two thirds of the time; that's about right—10 minutes and 17 seconds to learn the 29th lesson.

If I were a learner at this stage and I found French relatively easy having done what I just did, I should feel quite confident about this lesson, that I understand 90% of it. Maybe I'm forgetting this word, that word—I didn't really understand the difference about the comparison or whatnot—but I'm not worried about understanding it perfectly at this point, but getting a global understanding and seeing how it works.

Okay, so I've used up two-thirds of my time: 10 minutes of my 15-minute lesson. I've learned the new lesson. So the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to review some of the previous lessons.

With most other means of studying, it makes sense to review the previous lessons before you do the new lesson. In the learning stage, though, of this style of learning, because you want to make sure you get through the new lesson first, I would recommend that you do that a little bit reversed.

Again, you can play around with the mechanics of this. Right now, the lessons are still relatively short. I'm still a relative beginner. I know now probably the preceding lessons also took me about 10 minutes, but if I find when I get to lesson 60 or 70 that I need the whole 15 minutes to learn the new lesson and I can't even do the thing, maybe I need to spend two days learning each new lesson, I'll get a feel for how much I need to do, and then maybe I can start by reviewing a lesson first and then moving on to it.

But for now, I'm just figuring out. Okay, it takes me about 10 minutes to do a new lesson. Let me make sure I get through it, and then I'll go back and do some of the others. So let's go, and the next thing I would do is review some previous lessons.

The way small courses are structured, you have six lessons of dialogue, and then you have a review lesson. So I was going to lesson 35 for less from lesson 29. I was going up to 35 and looking at all the things in lesson 28—all the difficult points like the ones that I was skipping forward that were in lessons 22 through 27 are summarized and given in more detail here.

So again, I'm reviewing; I'm not going to read through all of this next thoroughly. I'm just going to go over it as if I were—if I had just learned it. I'm trying to at least give it a simulacrum of that. Okay, so I'm timing myself again.

Okay, the alphabet, I learned that; there's no problem with that. There was that old business, though: they used the word “tous” so often, and what does it mean? So, oh, in English it's one, but less formal. On the conference, it said that in France, but also this song is often sung can be found at the groceries or when the person who is the subject is unknown to telephone someone is asking if you're on the phone, and in modern spoken French, always used instead of “vous,” but that's considered incorrect.

Yeah, this is kind of complicated. Again, I'm going to put a star in the—at the moment, and then the next time I review this, I'm going to see if I need that star. So this tells me, oh, that's kind of interesting. Here's a list of the last group of French verbs, those which end in “-i” are so schwa rejected.

Okay, I got that and remember that third numbers. Okay, “vingt” is 20, and then for 21, “vingt et un,” but for 22, you don't put in that “-i,” you just say “vingt-deux”. The same for all the other numbers, but then you go up to “soixante”, and for 70, 80, and 90, this was complicated. I'm pretending I already had a star here.

So, okay, I need to say 60 is “soixante”, 70 is 60 plus 10, and 80 is four times—oh, that was complicated. I'm going to put two asterisks here, because I really don't get that. Numbers are hard.

Okay, but then there was “qui,” which—that in English, it depends on animator inanimate objects, but in French, it was the subject or object. Subject is “qui,” object is “que.” That's right. These examples are, remember: “le pain qui domine.” Yeah, the bread which is on my.

Okay, the bread that I am eating, the “pain que je mange.” Okay, the bread is, it's an inanimate object. But I can have “qui” or “que”—same thing with the man “qui”—the man whom I know, the man who is speaking.

Okay, again, this is an important point. Let me put a note there so that when I continuously review this, I'll note important things. “Suki," I got that, to want—that's an important verb. They also had “je voulais,” I expressed for pleasure. I feel like “je veux une réponse,” I want an answer. “J’ai envie d’une glace,” I feel like an ice cream.

Okay, alright. So, now I have reviewed lesson 28, which is a thoroughly textual one, and I've gotten the ideas. I’m going to go back now and I'm going to do lesson 27, which was the previous one that had a text. So I can—I ended by blind shadowing—I'm going to shadow, uh, for personal demonstration.

I’m going to maybe not, because you don't know what I'm saying if you haven't—so I would perhaps while I was doing this. I might shadow this again and see how much I understood first, but I could also—after I did that—and the next thing I'll do is I am going to come over here, and I'm looking at my watch and I say, “I'm already at 13 minutes.”

So, um, do I need to shadow? Do I need to look again? I make a decision. I’m using my time. So I'm going to now decide that I'm going to read it again and make sure I understand. So this is probably going to be the end of the lesson.

So I did lesson 27 two days ago, and then I had the review lesson, so I should remember this thoroughly, but just let me go through with the check again. So I'm going to read it.

Okay, 14 minutes and 43 seconds have sufficed for me to learn the new lesson of the day by going over it what was that five, six times and to review the two previous lessons. The ability to proceed at this pace depends again on how difficult the language is for you: how complicated it gets, in particular, materials, how much review you need to do.

But I feel like a language like this, coming along, I would be making good progress. This would be—I'm making good progress through the book. If I keep up at this pace, it's got 100 lessons. I should be—if I start, if I were to start on January 1st, or now it's January 4th, starting at the beginning of January, by April I should be done with the first cycle of going through the book.

And then I would obviously continue reviewing, making sure I had most of the material down, and then again, depending on how difficult I found the language, how much work I needed to do with it, in all cases the goal is, ultimately, you want to—without striving to memorize this—you want to internalize it. You want to digest it; you want it to be almost as if you have memorized the entire content of this.

And if you can do that, you will again—you'll be that advanced beginner; you'll have a thorough overview of most of the language. French has literary tenses that I don't think are introduced; verb conjugations I don't think are introduced here. You'd still be very hard-pressed to pick up a novel and read it after you finish this book, but you would have a very solid foundation. You could survive if you went there, and you would really have something to build upon.

So, uh, what I would recommend doing is doing what I just did and then just finding out how hard it is for you and for the particular language you're working with. And again, I would recommend if you have polyglotism learn French first and German, because that will give you access to the whole realm of books like this.

As I said, you probably finished the first cycle in the springtime, and then I would recommend spring is nice, summer is coming. I'll let you go into a more intensive shadowing phase. Maybe outside—take it outside walking, spend the entire 15 minutes if you can take the book with you for reference.

But you should be repeating and saying as much as you can, and then when you're sitting down reading aloud and making sure you understand as much as you can. And that, if you can continue internalizing, cycling through it, going over reviewing it, looking at those asterisks that you made and making sure you got clarity on all those points, by the time the weather starts getting cooler in autumn, then you can move on to a stage where you do a lot more, say, scriptorium with this, where you really note things. You copy things down; you write things out by hand.

And so by the end of the year, if you need to take that long, you should have gone through the book entirely, reviewed it several times, shadowed it multiple times, written it out by hand one or two times, and therefore thoroughly internalized it. And that's how you can learn a language, teach yourself a language in a year with spending 15 concentrated minutes every day in the right circumstances.

And they have to be systematic. It has to be at the same time, the same place, religiously done. But if you do it that way, then it's perfectly possible to teach yourself a language in a year. So, I hope this was helpful to you. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you again next time.