Stop Studying Languages — Read Like This Instead

How do you start? Day one with zero knowledge of the language. Not a single word known? Surely you have to learn some basics?
Also, I’m wanting to learn French and written French is completely different from spoken French so how does this help? Confused…

Interesting!

Thank you olly, I’m half way through with your french for begginers book, and read the three book bundle of german (Klima Wandel and so on…)

I'm so fucking sick of everyone in youtube saying "stop doing this, stop doing that, you're probably doing it wrong"

Hallo! 还 好 吗？Mula sa Pilipanas, currently learning Mandarin and German. Thank you for this video.

Repetition beats perfection? You got it!

Yes graded readers only make sense with an audio... so I have to say, why make anyone pay for the audio separately (or rather twice). The books look interesting but I prefer other products that come complete.

My 5-minute break turned into watching the entire video.

how to read my way to fluency in chinese? I find it impossible in this language due to one unique trait: characters. Somehow it worked for other languages such as german, french and portuguese.

Does it work for absolute beginners? I started russian a week ago...
Plus how do I deal with the itch to translate everything or knowing everything

Cats are wise ....

3:47 - The Kindle App on my phone does a great job here. There’s a feature called "Assistive Reader"—it’s really helpful. I can adjust the speed, and the words being read are highlighted as it goes. I’m from Germany, and this is how I’m currently reading a few interesting books in English.

Hi Olly!!! I've loved this video and have come back after watching it a couple days ago. Got stumped with this one, as I don't know where to find the material that would be challenging enough for me, while also having the audio for it. I'm scarping into C1 in French and B2 in Spanish, so normal books and media is where I'm getting my content from. I want to avoid using AI to just read it out for me for ethical and environmental reasons so I'd really appreciate some help on this!!!! I'm also loving your intermediate French book. For me, but top tips are Anki (spaced repetition to learn vocab or grammar points), reading out-loud stories or news, forming in-person connections with other speakers so that the language feels more real and finally, trying to make the language learning process as fun as possible for you :)

We have worn exactly same colour shirt light green 🍏 haha


And actually I'm learning english but I don't have a partner to practice with so if anyone here who is a native English speaker I would really appreciate if you lend me 15 minutes of your precious time

Doesn't work with languages that doesn't have much written sources :)

My cat gets jealous if I speak to someone else. She knows. She expects the attention in any language.

I have a question regarding this method and Japanese. So I'm currently trying to learn Spanish and Japanese. Spanish is no problem because I already know the alphabet and I can read even if I don't understand. Now, with Japanese, reading a text like this method. First of all, I'd have to find short stories in kids' language because all the kanji would be a major downside for reading. I know Hiragana and Katakana. I did Japanese before, but I'd like to get back to it. Am I going about the same way with Japanese and just trying to read a short story, or do I approach this method differently with Japanese? Or any language for that matter that uses a different alphabet.

I feel like this method might work with songs also. I have written out lyrics to songs to read along with while I listen , but I hadn't thought to pick one song and drill it in. The bonus would be that I have the song in my head at work , sleeping , etc. I'll pick songs that I know I won't get tired of. Thanks

this advice is useless when you are studing Japanese or Chinese. Because reading will not help you to study the language. Just becasue you will not be able to read any if you do not study the language before reading

니 말 알아 들을수 있으면 뭐하러 더 영어 공부 하겠니 ? 혼자 많이 떠들어라 미국인들 잘 듣게…ㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎ

Me pregunto por qué la madre no dijo: ¿Y tú, dónde estuviste?Y

Bookbox is a YouTube channel with many videos of narrated stories for teaching children various languages, with subtitles for all the texts. I narrated a number of the stories in Esperanto (my daughter helped on some).

Brilliant. I imagine that students queue for your classes.

this is a great, but if you are learning a relatively obscure language none of these tools exist

Why is there a picture of someone's butt displayed on the bookcase in the background? It is level with the speaker's ear. It's not a naked butt, still, it makes the video seem like a prank.

the "5 minutes turns into 20" thing is so real. anything bigger and I bail by week two.

Would it be similar just working through a scene of subtitles with a scene of movie or show playing?

Ha! I read aloud in Spanish
to my dogs.

how does it work when first step condition is to know 80% of the words!!!

2:56 There is an error here. "Lucia" should be spelled "Lucía" with a tilde (accent) over the "i".

I think my cats are becoming fluent in feline French...

I'm doing the same thing with the Easy Spanish Listening podcast, I have the transcript and the audio, and I try to make time to listen to it daily, I shadow it, write down phrases and words that I may need to look up, and to help retain, and overall just try to listen to it enough so the words will stick and that does help. My little curiosities though are not sounds or rolling the R's, ( though I still need to learn to pronunciate) it's past and future tenses. I feel like learning past and future tenses will make a big difference with conversations and so far the more I see it and read it, it's gradually sticking (deberías -you should debería - I should etc). Im trying to get into the habit of speaking long sentences, writing it out, repeating it, anything to help me to gradually get better.

🌹💙 This is brilliant! Thank you! New subscriber and senior citizen here wanting to learn Chilean Spanish. Starting with standard Spanish first, then learning the Chilean 🇨🇱 dialect later. Greetings from the Mojave Desert 🏜️.

Some YouTube videos have the original language subtitled like Brut France and Police Action. I learn some French that way.

I wanted to ask if your Japanese book is good for someone like me about 30% till n5

Lingua is a good site for practicing reading and listening to short about 1 minute texts. I recommend

Мне кажется в наше время имеет смысл читать только субтитры на Ютубе.

It's absolutely infuriating when the subtitles don't match the dub of a film. So, I spent a few days creating a Italian dub matched subtitle file for the original 1977 Star Wars. That really worked well for helping me learn. It forced me to listen really carefully and learn idiomatic phrases I'd never heard before, and knowing the dialogue of the film backwards and forwards really helped too. The Italian dub of Star Wars is a masterpiece, by the way.

I’m impressed with your Spanish pronunciation, it’s perfect. You sound like a native Spanish speaker.

The Short Stories in Swedish contains multiple errors. An error-free text is a sine qua non for language learning.

If you're studying Japanese - forget this - it's impossible- unless you are at least intermediate level (REAL intermediate, not this guy's idea of it, which seems to be 'almost fluent').

Hey there. I have a few things going on in the process. Before I stat, I am learning more and more and stuff is sticking, The problems lie in somewords/terms that I know off by heart yet there are times when my mind goes blank. Also, when I see a sentence sometimes with some of the words it is as if I'm not seeing/processing them at all so when typing a sentence in English it will be missing the last 2 or 3 words since my mind is legit not seeing them, and sometime it will be random words within the sentence. What is even more bizarre is that I still type it out with said missing words and my mind does not even notice that anything is missing until I click continue to see if my answer was correct.

I even had to go to something else that was not related to learning a new language to see if I was maybe developing alzheimers or something including a few online tests for it, but everything seems okay outside of the whole learning a new language kind of thing...

I am just not used to these kinds of things occuring and was wondering if you or anyone else reading this might have some possible answers/reasons as to why these thing are happening from time to time.

The best self diagnostics I have are that during the learning process my mind is just simply having to figure things out the more I learn. Not erasing my previous knowledge, but just having to keep putting the piece together and that from time time some things get scrambled for a bit during the process of adding new pieces/connections.

Again, I am able to keep learning and retaining new stuff and of course studying is all part of the process in regards to having to retain new words/rules and so on. What I fond bizarre, and maybe it's just bad luck, but, even when searching online I legit can not find any info on others who say they have experienced these kinds of things in regards to learning a new language.

Hello Olly. I'm studying French (B1) I'm using both the story learning material and I'm reading your graded readers with audio. Additionally I'm using your new app and it's amazing. My question is this: given your advice here to get content with audio why isn't there audio with the app? Also, on the app it would be nice if there were comprehension test at the end of the chapters as there are in your books. Keep up the good work!

Hi, I'm from Brazil 🇧🇷! I'm learning English, but I think a difficult language. I just know the basic.