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Speaker 1:          00:00          Hello everyone. Welcome to the Lange focus channel. My name is Paul. Today we are going to talk about language learning edge number four and that is focus. Focus comes first. A lot of people who really get into learning languages as a passion and as a hobby, they have a certain weakness and that weakness is that they are visionary, they are too visionary, they have too many new ideas all the time, too many things that they want to try too many things that they want to do. Too many things that they want to create sometimes. Now in some ways that's awesome. That's very good for being creative and for getting new ideas and setting new goals, but it can also be a distraction because it's difficult to focus on one thing for a long enough to achieve it. Right? Maybe you start to learn French, but then you read a little bit about the other romance languages and you want to start studying Italian or Spanish or something.

Speaker 1:          00:51          Maybe you're learning Arabic and then you think, hmm, it would be interesting to learn Hebrew too and see how they're related. So it's very easy to get sidetracked from the language that you want to be focusing on at the moment. If you really think about it, who gets good at new skills the most quickly? It's probably people who get really obsessed with that skill are really obsessed with learning and practicing around that topic and that's because they're dedicating so much of their mental resources to that skill or to that topic. You might think that if you study French for one hour that that's the same as studying French for one hour plus Spanish for one hour. Like you will be learning the same amount of French in both scenarios. But I would say that that's not true and that's because a lot of the learning takes place when you're not studying.

Speaker 1:          01:36          It takes place in the background. Subconsciously you're processing and you're synthesizing all the things you've studied in the background while you're going about your day and doing other things. Sometimes if you are in tune with that kind of inner voice, you can notice that you'll notice in the background, your mind is making sentences in the language while you're driving or while you're on the train or while you're talking to someone you can, you can be aware of some of that processing going on so that learning is taking place when you're not studying, but if you are focusing on two different languages, if you're studying Spanish for one hour a day and you're studying French for one hour a day, then that subconscious background processes being divided between two different languages so you're not getting as much of that growth going on in the background. Even if you dedicate the same amount of study times to that language.

Speaker 1:          02:22          So the most efficient way to learn one language really well is to focus on that language and that language alone. Now, how do you do that if you're one of those visionary people who get all those ideas, how do you kind of manage all the ideas and all the goals that you have where you have to kind of get used to pushing certain goals? Often to the distance into the future, I wouldn't think of pushing them aside or putting them behind you. I would think of putting them off into the future. So after you finish achieving this current goal right now, for example, getting really good at French in the future. Beyond that, you can see the next goal in front of you, which is to start learning Spanish or whatever your language of interest. Yes. But just think of it like that. Like you're not discarding those goals are discarding those missions you were, you were kind of putting them off into the future and you'll get to them later.

Speaker 1:          03:09          But your primary mission right now is this one which you need to accomplish first before you can get to that future mission. So I've been talking about focus in the grand sense, like in terms of your large goals and that kind of thing. But of course focus is also important in the moment because we live in such a distraction, prawn world with the Internet and with smartphones and with email and all those things, there's just, there's so much distraction all around you all the time that it's difficult to focus on the task at hand. Even if you have put all of your secondary goal is often to the future, just focusing on your primary goal. It can be tough just on a day by day basis. We all have our different weaknesses. Some people get caught up in facebook, some people like me get caught up in youtube, like I get caught up in all of the videos in the sidebar.

Speaker 1:          03:55          I'll end up watching 20 videos when I planned to just watch one and that kind of thing. So it's really easy to get off track and lose focus of what your goal is for that day. So it's important to not leave it to willpower. It's important to have some strategies in place and make some decisions that will help guide your behavior when you're trying to get something done. Avoiding distractions and staying focused is a little different for everyone. But I'll give you a couple of things that I used to deal with these situations. Maybe you have some other ideas that you can share in the comments. One of my strategies for avoiding distractions is that I have a kind of transition activity. It's a one kind of study or one kind of study method that I find enjoyable that's really easy for me to get started at that I don't hesitate or procrastinate when starting, and that's kind of my stepping stone into studying.

Speaker 1:          04:41          So for me that is listening passively to the news in my target language. I really enjoy that. It's relaxing, it's kind of meditative. I can just sit there and just commonly listen and that's an easy way for me to get into that language is mode. So if I'm listening to French on the news, I can sit there and relax, but then I start to notice words. I'm like, Hey, what does that word mean? And I'll pick up my dictionary and look it up and I'll start to get curious. I'll start to get into French study mode. And then after that I'm going to pick up my books and I'm going to start studying and then that kind of thing will happen. I'll transition into studying French through that easy activity that I enjoy doing and that's kind of a low investment activity for me. So maybe that's something you can try it.

Speaker 1:          05:21          If you really like listening to songs in your target language, that can be your transition into studying or if you really just like talking to people, maybe you can go on facebook and chat with some native speakers in that language, leave some comments in that language, just getting that interaction, but whatever it is for you, that's kind of low commitment and easy to get started with, but is in your target language. That's a good way to transition into studying. Another important thing is to actually physically block out distractions. Like sometimes I pick up my phone, my smartphone, and I put it in the other room so that it won't be distracting to me. I always have the ringer turned off and when I'm focusing on studying, I'll turn off all of the notifications like no facebook notifications, no line APP notifications, nothing like that. But sometimes I'll still be interested in picking up my phone in and checking something, but if I want to avoid that I'll just pick it up and put it in the other room.

Speaker 1:          06:13          So it's kind of a hassle to get up and go do that. The benefit of actually picking up the phone is not as big as the hassle of going to get it, so it's good to sometimes just remove those distractions from your environment. Another thing that I don't really do but some of my friends do is to use a kind of software or application that blocks websites that you find particularly distracting. Like there's one, uh, this one software called cold Turkey and there's another one that is called stay focused. That's a chrome add on that you can use to block certain websites. Like, let's say you get caught up in facebook all the time, or you visit tech crunch blog all the time, but you want to just stay away from those for a while. You can put those in your block list. So then whenever you turn on that software, it'll block those websites.

Speaker 1:          06:55          And I think you can specify a certain period of time as well so that you can't just go in and change the settings whenever you want and will actually block you, um, based on the time you decide in advance. So you can kind of change your mind in the middle. You've already fixed the blockage of those websites. So that's another thing you can try if you're distracted by any specific websites. Another thing that I do to stay focused is I listened to binaural beats track on Youtube. I just search for binaural beats concentration and one of those videos will come up. I have a specific one that I liked that I always listened to. So you can try a few of them to see which one helps you focus and just put on your headphones and while you're studying, use that. Uh, you can do it when you're just studying with your textbook, but also if you're using audio materials, you can play both at the same time.

Speaker 1:          07:39          If it's on your computer, you can play that youtube track, but you can also use your cds and just have them playing over top of each other and it's fine. You can turn down the binaural beats a little bit and just listen to the audio track mainly. But the binaural beats be there in the background kind of helping you focus. Some people say that binaural beats don't work. There's no scientific basis. Well, if it helps you focus, then it works. So it doesn't really matter if it's scientifically proven or not. Try it, see if it helps you. All right, so those are some of my ideas on how to stay focused. Focus comes first. It's important for learning the language that you really want to get good at. All right. This is Paul and this is Lang Focus. Thank you for tuning in. Have a good day. When you were an infant, you spend about a year just sitting there and listening to the language before you actually say anything, just absorbing the sounds. You were internalizing the phonology before you actually produce it as an adult. Do you have a year to sit around doing that? I know I don't. I've met a lot of people who are great with languages while traveling and also in my regular life, and I'd like to talk about a couple of particularly impressive people that we can learn something from.