How to learn any language by yourself- Language tips from a polyglot

Therefore today I have an ultimate guide for learning a language at home.

So step one is obviously picking a language. When it comes to picking a language, it's important to pick a language that you enjoy because if you don't enjoy that language, it's gonna be super hard for you to learn it, spend hours and hours in order to learn it.

When I was learning German, yes, I was crying every single day, but I was so passionate about German because I really love that language. On this channel, as you might know, we don't rely on motivation because we don't need motivation. All we need is discipline.

But always relying on your discipline, maybe in the long run, can harm you. Therefore, it's important to pick something that is fun for you so that you don't need to rely on your motivation either on your discipline, because you're going to do something that you truly enjoy.

If you want to learn more about motivation and discipline, you can check this video out.

So step two is setting goals and systems. Even though I think goals are kind of pointless sometimes, goals are important in order to understand how much work you gotta put in to achieve that goal.

So in order to do that, set yourself a goal and then think retrospectively. So let's say I want to become fluent in English or I want to become fluent in Italian in a month.

I'm gonna think retrospectively, which basically means looking backwards. So in order to get fluent in a month, how much do I need to study Italian every single day? Let's say it's eight hours, and I'm gonna think, okay, is this realistic for me to study eight hours every single day for a month?

The answer is probably no. I need to set my goal once again because now I have a realistic expectation of myself that I cannot learn Italian in a month. Therefore, I'm going to reset this goal.

I'm only picking a goal in order to set my system because, as we know from a very famous productivity slash habit-making book, Atomic Habits, rather than goals, we should focus on our systems instead.

If you only focus on your goals and forget about the system, so the way that you're going to achieve that goal, you won't succeed. But if you only focus on your system instead and forget about the goal, you will succeed.

If you want to learn more about this, I have a video as well you can watch it.

But anyways, so step three is the explanation of my method. If you haven't watched the video of mine, which just hit 1 million views, I guess, how I learn English by myself without studying at home video, I can't summarize it for you.

When it comes to my story, I learned English by myself before starting my English journey. By my own, of course, I had lessons. English in our school is mandatory in most of the countries.

I think it was around 87 percent or something. And anyways, in Turkey, it's also mandatory. So from elementary school until high school, of course, you're gonna have English lessons.

But the thing is, I was able to understand very basic stuff when it comes to English, like very basic daily conversations. But I wasn't able to respond to him. Of course, I was able to say, like, you know, about very, very, very basic stuff. But I wasn't fluent.

Nor was I able to explain something. In order to use my method, you need a very basic level of language knowledge, but it's like super easy to hit that goal, so don't be worried at all.

You can use various language apps, such as like italki or other apps in order to come to that level. But don't worry, you can like literally hit that level in a month or so.

So there are six steps when it comes to my method, and step one is picking something to watch. If you don't know, I learn English by watching YouTube videos, like several hours of YouTube videos every single day.

You can basically start with Netflix or YouTube or whatever you enjoy. It can be literally documentaries, films, or animes and stuff.

But it's important that it's something that you truly enjoy because, as I said, in order to learn that language by your own, you gotta enjoy it.

And then step two is watch them at normal speed. So when watching these videos, you have to put the subtitles on, and you have to watch at least one to two hours every single day.

I was probably watching around like three to four hours every single day of YouTube. At the beginning, I wasn't really able to understand what they were saying, but I was watching it anyway.

Because I was, at that time, addicted to makeup tutorials. In order to understand the makeup tutorial, you don't really need to understand the language because you literally like watching the techniques and stuff.

So it might help if you're into makeup, but if you're not into makeup, you can literally pick something else. It's not important to understand at the beginning; it's important to get comfortable with that language.

And it's important to make it a routine of your daily life.

So another thing that you have to do in the step two period is that consuming media only in your target language and change your phone settings into your target language. When I was learning English and when I was learning German, I was only consuming media in German.

Therefore, like I downloaded several news apps and I was reading them, and also I was using my phone in German so that I can like pick up new words from the settings and you know from the notifications and stuff.

It's a very simple step, but it's really important. And another thing that I can give is that listening to music in your target language.

When I was learning German, I was like super into German rap and I don't really know most of the slangs because of the German rap. And I can curse pretty good in German because of raps.

I don't know if this is a good tip, but anyways, you know I listen to music in your target language. I'm sure that you can learn new words, whether good or bad.

So now step three: watch the videos without subtitles at normal speed. At this point, you have to be understanding the videos without subtitles.

At the beginning, we started with the subtitles, and now you're going to remove them and try to understand the videos without the subtitles. If you say, "Hey Rudy, how can I find the subtitles?" you can just simply put your auto-subtitle generation in YouTube if you're using YouTube, and I'm sure that Netflix has subtitle options as well.

Watch these videos without subtitles at least an hour, and after every single time you watch an episode, try to summarize it in your own words. You don't need to write them.

I mean, it of course will be better for you if you write and summarize them, but creating a lot of friction is not really good. We are trying to minimize the friction of action when it comes to self-studying.

You can explain it to your imaginary friend, and whenever you are trying to summarize it in your own words, try not to use a translator because we're trying to build a second brain in that language so that you can think in that language.

If you're translating every single thing when you're talking in your brain, that means that you don't have a second brain in that language. If you want to learn more about this, like second brain stuff, I can make a video about it.

Let me know in the comments down below.

So now step four is start to read in your target language. At this point, you have to be understanding the videos without subs at normal speed.

So now we’re gonna start reading; it can literally be anything. It doesn't have to be something beneficial for you. It can be magazines, or it can be a blog post about random things.

But these days, there are so many blog posts about like very interesting topics, and there are so many blog posts, newsletters, and there's so many varieties of things free to read to enjoy.

So I would highly, highly recommend subscribing to someone's email newsletter. As well as the videos, try to summarize after reading a chapter of something or one newsletter or one blog post or one news.

Try to summarize them in your own words again; we're trying not to use a translator and try to summarize them in your own words, and please keep continuing the watching of the videos.

So now step five is watch the videos at 1.5 to double speed. This is going to train your listening quite a lot because since you're listening to the videos in double speed, you have to really focus on the video in order to understand that language.

Please keep reading and also watch videos.

And step six is please continue doing all of them: reading, summarizing them afterward, and watching videos every single day, a minimum of an hour, and then trying to summarize them in your own words.

It took me about a year in order to become fluent in that language. I know a year seems quite a long period of time, but when you consider that we literally get like English education over 10 years, maybe more, but not fluent, and you can literally become fluent in that language by your own for free in a year.

So I don't think that it's too long. Even though this method seems to be a very cool method, of course, there are some cons of this method.

As I said, we're not using a translator, and also we're not really studying grammar at this point, as you probably might notice.

And when you don't study grammar, I picked up the grammar pretty well, but I know some of my friends did this method, but their grammar literally sucks. I do a lot of grammar mistakes as well.

And if you're learning that language in order to use it in an academic field, then this might be a problem. It's harder and harder to fix those mistakes that you learned in a wrong way.

So it's important to learn them from the beginning in a correct way. And how we can do it? It's always important to get a good solid feedback when you're learning something.

And you can do it by using italki, which is today's sponsor. In italki, you can get one-on-one lessons in more than 150 languages.

So there are 150 languages that you can pick, and I think everybody can find their target language in italki. So you might think that, oh Rudy is recommending something expensive once again, and the thing is, you can join the italki community for free, and you can do free practices there.

You can also take 101 lessons in italki. Also, if money is a problem, italki offers special codes and coupons from time to time.

Especially at the end of 2021, they're gonna do a lot of discounts, so don't forget to check him out. You can find a bunch of native speakers on italki, as well as certified native speakers who can give you effective feedback.

And also, another great thing about learning with italki is that you don't need to stick to a schedule. You can literally book the lessons according to your schedule.

And especially if you're learning that language at your home, I think you don't really want to stick to some sort of a schedule, right? If you want to learn the language at midnight, you can literally pick a teacher at midnight in your time zone, and you can have a lesson.

If you're the type of person who doesn't like to commit to things, you can pay per lesson. So you don't need to buy a bunch of lessons and worry about if you're gonna like him or not.

You can pick a lesson, pay for it, and then take the lesson, and the next time you're gonna decide if you want to continue with that teacher or you can pick another teacher.

And also, there are different learning methods in italki like assessments and prompts and etc. So you can't find a learning method that works for you because we all learn in a different way.

What works for me might not work for you.

So yeah, thank you italki for sponsoring this video. Now let's talk about the vocabularies and remembering the vocabularies. Even though I didn't do anything special for learning new vocabularies, a great tip to speed up your vocabulary learning, like span, is using Anki.

Anki is an app which you can use on iPhone as well as on Android as well as on your PC. I think on PC it's free, but when it comes to like iPhones, of course, you have to pay.

It's a great app which practices spaced repetition and active recall, which are the most effective science-based learning methods. I can make a video about those if you guys want, but Ali Abdull has an amazing video about it that you can check out.

But basically, in Anki, you can make flashcards, and you can make flashcards of these new vocabularies that you're having hard times learning about them.

And you can practice them while like on the bus, waiting for someone else, while you're on the loo, and stuff. So I highly, highly recommend it.

Since Anki app has AI that literally tracks which words you're struggling with and which words you easily learned, it can create some sort of a schedule according to your learning so that you can learn new vocabularies effectively.

I highly recommend Anki. I really love it. I use it whenever I'm studying anatomy in med school, so I totally recommend it.

I'll put every single thing down in the description below so that you can check him out. I'm gonna link all of the things about italki as well.

Thank you italki for sponsoring this video, and let me know if you have any questions in the comments section.

And let me see you in my next video. Bye. [Music]