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TEDx video to encourage speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5414 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes  Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 30 14 January 2012 at 11:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hey everyone! I'd appreciate feedback on this TEDx talk I gave. They may consider it for the big TED, which would have tens of millions of views, and really get this encouraging message across to everyone.
http://www.youtu.be/watch?v=_yhnWnR1g7M You'll notice I didn't promote my site at all, or give any of my more controversial pieces of advice, and didn't claim that I can do anything amazing. I really genuinely want people who think they can't, to simply start speaking a language earlier. Perhaps you dislike my advice, my missions, my blog, the fact that I earn from it, my personality and all that, but I really think this is video is very easy to agree with (unless you prefer a more study-based approach, which is fine, just not something that works for many people, especially those not as passionate about languages as you). I don't think I'm a very articulate person so I hope I explained myself well enough. If you've any tips for how I can improve this talk (it was only my second time ever publicly speaking) I'd love to hear them! I may have similar opportunities in future. 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ellsworth Senior Member United States Joined 4738 days ago 345 posts - 528 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Irish | Message 2 of 30 15 January 2012 at 12:20am | IP Logged | ||
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I liked it. I really do think you are good at getting people who wouldn't otherwise want
to learn a language into the process and make the whole thing seem very unintimidating. I showed my Dad this earlier today after seeing it on your website, and he, who has been struggling to understand how to approach learning French, very much enjoyed it. Also, you seemed very at ease, so good job with that if this was only your second time in public like that! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6218 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 3 of 30 15 January 2012 at 12:51am | IP Logged | ||
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in for later. I want to see this.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4827 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 4 of 30 15 January 2012 at 2:17am | IP Logged | ||
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You seem very nervous at various times, especially at the beginning you're particularly halting, though you got better after about 4min in.
Also, the video doesn't introduce you as a successful yet humble polyglot. And you tiptoe the humble line so close that at no point do you come across as having learnt a language (aside from the couple of foreign phrases at the start), which imho is, or should be, an important part of your inspiring personality and message. So I think a few words towards your, and by extension anyone's, success would be in order, without appearing polyglot extraordinaire. Overall, great video, sound, even conservative advice, sans any controversy. Hope you get picked for the more general TED talk. Best of luck! Cheers. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5647 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 5 of 30 15 January 2012 at 2:45am | IP Logged | ||
I liked it. I was motivated. The part about worrying that your language partner will find you boring or annoying rang true for me. Maybe now I will stop worrying about that and get on with speaking and communicating. As a suggestion, maybe a bit longer 'demo' in one of your L2s to convince your listeners that you really can speak a foreign language. Thanks Benny. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5414 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 30 15 January 2012 at 4:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the feedback everyone :)
Good thoughts, although I made my demo in my L2s short, and didn't go into details about my current successes for a reason. A longer demo would require subtitles, and perhaps be a little TOO impressive. I'm trying to relate to struggling language learners, and a long demo may distance me too much from them, and I'd rather focus on the part of my story they can relate to. Quickly flicking between accents for a few seconds is actually more than enough to convince the majority of monolinguals, especially those in America. This is unfortunate, but true. Those who speak languages well and are not impressed by something that could easily have perhaps been parroting may think I've far from proven myself, but they aren't the ones I'm aiming the talk at ;) I'd rather focus on inspiring monolinguals than convincing other polyglots. Since a few people are suggesting this, maybe there is a way to express the successful part of my story better, while still not distancing myself from the monolinguals so much? A sort of mid-point. This is the very reason I have so few multilingual videos online. The reaction is almost always "wow, you're so smart!" which I don't think is helpful and is the opposite of the message I want to get across. The other issue is time. I was 15 seconds under the cut off limit!! Since I prepared the talk in a hurry the night before, I actually had more I wanted to say, but saw a sign being waved at me at the front of the audience of "1 minute left!!" and had to wrap up. I made up the conclusion on the spot and was surprised with how it turned out! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5189 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 7 of 30 15 January 2012 at 9:45am | IP Logged | ||
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I can agree with some of the above posters as far as the first few minutes being a bit choppy. It doesn't seem that you were necessarily nervous, just perhaps unrehearsed. You clearly knew where you wanted to go with the talk, but some of the segues from topic to topic were a bit clunky. I've seen you do roughly the same material somewhere else, but perhaps because it was a smaller venue you seemed more comfortable. Once you settled down after the first few minutes (not that they were bad at all, just a bit choppy and indecisive when compared to the very nice flow of the talk later on) the presentation side of things was just fine. I agree with some of the other posters in that you should find a few more ways to show off your speaking abilities in different languages. You did a decent job with it, but without looking at your language list I felt you were only comfortable with English, French, and Spanish (maybe German too?), which wouldn't be particularly extraordinary for some of the Europeans that might be listening.
I also don't want to get into much of a debate over specific learning techniques, but just as a listener when I hear things such as "I learned Spanish for X years in school and learned nothing" or "German classes were horrible for me and I just remember seeing tables" to then dismiss it as all being completely irrelevant and that as soon as I STARTED SPEAKING (your method apparently) THAT'S WHEN I finally learned something, it seems more than a little disingenuous. To me, that's the point where you go from someone that is very nice and helpful to someone that resembles an infomercial. As an objective listener I can believe that although many years of passive study in school might have been borderline useless in a measurable way when dealing with L2 foreigners, it would be very hard for me to believe that those years of passive instruction did not help IN ANY WAY with the sudden switch to useful active language use you seem to claim. If you think it is possible to have successful active use from day 1 then fine, but telling me you studied German or Spanish in the "old methods" and then could only function in those languages after giving up those old methods (as if you could wipe away the things you've learned, whether you realized it or not) seems unlikely. You may have not have learned any active skills, but as a listener it would be hard for me to believe you didn't pick up many useful passive skills that you could more easily switched over to an active skill later on compared to a person truly starting from ground zero. If you really want to impress upon others the idea of your method, you should use a language that you had no experience with "book learning" whatsoever, just as an illustrative example of how the "just talk" method works relative to other methods. I think I saw on your blog you tried this with Turkish, but I may be wrong. It's very hard to discern how much you truly wish to discard with traditional learning methods compared to the "just speak 100%" method it seems you are espousing. At times I don't know if you even have a problem with traditional methods, other than a dislike for tables (which I'm sure we all hate), and your example in the talk of how to memorize "playa" is similar to methods I've seen in dozens of traditional texts. I also have an impossible time imagining how even having beautiful grammatical speech is going to help one UNDERSTAND the L2 language coming at them at native speed. In my experience the speaking part is truly trivial compared to the task of listening. It does seem you are going more for the inspirational thing, rather than some technical attack on traditional techniques, so perhaps much of what I've posted is inconsequential. If I were you ... I'd speak every language I knew including sign language 80% of the time, with a splash of knowledge before and a splash of knowledge after. The greatest leaders have always been ones that can DO, not just say. If you can blow people's heads off, they will follow you. Regardless, good luck. You do a good job of inspiring people, which is a rare attribute in itself amongst us egg-heads hoping others will learn more foreign languages. Edited by Sandman on 15 January 2012 at 9:48am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5414 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 8 of 30 15 January 2012 at 11:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the detailed reply Sandman.
"which wouldn't be particularly extraordinary for some of the Europeans that might be listening." - my target audience is English speakers, especially Americans. So this point is moot because of that. If learning a second language (European or otherwise) is perceived as the norm, then the viewer doesn't really need to hear my message ;) "just speak 100%" <-- This isn't my message. I said in the video that I like grammar and specifically go back to the books. There's a big difference between encouraging people to speak more and sooner than most learners, and telling them that speaking all the time is the only way and to burn all their grammar material ;) A video in all my languages 80% of the time would be very entertaining indeed... But the entertainment factor would be far too distracting from the core message and totally inappropriate for a TED (or similar) talk. Also, I'm not necessarily trying to be a "leader" - the best way to inspire people I find is to relate to them and show them that if I can do it, so can they. Thanks for the tips - I'll try to rehearse the intro better in future so I stumble less before gaining some momentum. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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