This is something that we hear about a lot in the language learning world, how we should strive to learn languages like children learn languages.

And I've got a lot to say here, and I think this will be a theoretical type video, like some of my videos are, meaning I don't have scientific evidence and proof to back up everything I'm saying.

And to be honest, I'm not super clear on all of these points.

I'm just kind of reflecting about this, and I thought why not reflect out loud so that you can practice your listening while I speak.

I know you guys like when I just ramble on and on, meaning I just talk and talk even if I'm disorganized.

I want to talk about this because it's a really interesting topic in my opinion.

I haven't really researched this, and so I'm just giving my thoughts about this.

I have young children, so I do observe things that my children do, specifically my son who is three and a half about.

And so I'm not an expert. I'm not a researcher, but I can talk from my personal experience as a father because I think some people who talk about this topic don't have kids, and so they might be assuming certain things or just theorizing about certain things, but in reality, they've never observed a child learn a language the way a parent has.

So I think that at least that gives me a little bit more credibility, even though I'm not talking from a researcher's perspective or whatever, but I'm sure that you'll appreciate hearing my opinions about this.

Maybe you disagree with some things that I say.

That's fine. I say that all the time.

Okay, you can tell me in the comments if you disagree, and if I disagree with you, I'll probably tell you that in the comments.

So don't be afraid to let me know.

And of course, before we continue on, activate that little notification bell so you get notified when I release new videos, and I'll talk about it at the end as always, but also check out my advanced podcast episodes and my list—sorry, my—what is it called?

My U.S. Conversations podcast, which is a great resource for you because I talk to other native speakers from around the country, and we have conversations at full speed, and I provide the transcript for you with the definitions of key words and phrases that we use.

So it's really useful. Go check that out. The link is down below.

All right, let's talk about learning English like a child, and of course, this could be applied to any language, but since you're learning English, I'm using the word English here.

I'm using that language as an example.

Okay, so first of all, I want to make a distinction because when people talk about this,

I think that sometimes they fail to talk about the differences between a child learning their native language and a child learning their second language if they learn one, okay?

Those are two different things, and I think those—that distinction is very important because I think when most people talk about this topic, they're referring to how a child learns their first language.

That's usually what they're referring to when they say that you need to learn your native— sorry, your target language like a child learns their native language.

So usually, they're referring to this.

Sometimes they're not, but in most cases, they probably are.

So for me, that's very different from a child learning their second language if they learn one, okay?

I'm talking about a child learning a language maybe when they're six, seven, eight, nine, something like that, okay?

I honestly think that there are more lessons to be learned from how children learn a foreign language more so than how a child learns their first language.

For us as adults, for language learners,

I think that there is more that we can extract from and apply to our own language learning from how a child learns a foreign language.

And I'm going to spend the first part of this video talking about why I don't necessarily think that a child learning their native language should be the model that we use for ourselves as adults learning a foreign language, okay?

So, and then I'll talk about a child learning a foreign language and the principles we can extract from that, some practical things, okay?

So, there are some things about the way a child learns their native language that, of course, we can try to replicate and that are useful.

And I'm not going to go over those things.

You can probably imagine some of them.

I want to go over the differences because I think it's very common for people to just forget how different it is when a child learns their native language from how an adult learns a foreign language.

And we can't really replicate this process, okay?

It's just not feasible.

It's just not possible even, okay?

So, I'm going to give my opinion about a child learning their first language.

So, let's talk about listening, okay?

I've said this before that, like, you know, a child spends a long time just listening.

They don't talk, right?

They just listen, listen, listen, and eventually they talk.

And I think that as an adult learning a foreign language, this can be a useful approach for many people, not for everyone.

So, even though I have my own ideas and philosophy about language learning,

I am very open about the fact that I think that other people's ideas might be just as valid as mine.

And I don't think there's just one method, one philosophy that just works for everyone.

I don't believe that.

I think that some people won't benefit as much from my specific language learning philosophy, okay?

So, I know some people might tell you that there really is one great way to learn languages and every other way is inferior.

I don't agree with that.

I actually think that there are different ways that work for different people.

But I would say the way I think about it, my philosophy does work for many people.

And that's why, you know, this YouTube channel and my podcast are so popular because they have really helped people.

My method, my philosophy has helped people that maybe are more similar to me as language learners, okay?

But other people might need a different approach.

So, I've talked about how just like I like to do as an adult, where I just listen for a while before I speak.

Children do the same thing, right, when they're learning their first language.

So, that is a similarity.

Children are silent for a long time before they speak, right?

Maybe, I don't know, they speak at different ages.

I'm not going to give a whole range here because it's a pretty wide range.

But they spend a while just silent, right, and just listening.

So, I think that is something we can, you know, draw from and say, okay, maybe as adults we should listen for a while before we speak.

And I actually like that approach.

Maybe you don't, but I like it.

However, that silent period that a child has is not the same as what we have as adults.

Like when a one-year-old baby can't talk yet and they're just listening and hearing the language that they will eventually speak natively, they hear a bunch of sounds that don't really mean a whole lot to them, kind of like us when we're adults listening to a foreign language.

But one thing that's different is that the baby still has the capability of hearing every sound and distinguishing every sound in the world.

What I mean by that is something happens at a certain age, children start to lose the ability to distinguish all the different phonemes, all the different sounds from all the different languages from around the world.

And then, like once you're an adult, you might have a lot of trouble even just distinguishing a sound in a certain language, even just identifying a single sound.

A very common example of this is if you speak a language like Japanese, for example, and it's the only language you've ever spoken, right?

You might not actually be able to hear the difference between the R sound and the L sound in English.

There have been demonstrations of this, like people...

I don't know if there are videos of this or not, but I've heard anecdotes of how a teacher will show them a recording of the two sounds, the R sound and the L sound.

And for me, an English speaker, I can distinguish those two sounds.

However, someone who is a native Japanese speaker, maybe, who's never learned another language and they're already an adult, they might not even be able to distinguish those sounds.

And that's not a fault, you know, that's not like a flaw in their, you know, character or intelligence.

That's just how sounds work.

Like this window, I'll call it, of like all the sounds in the world, that closes, it narrows at a certain point in our childhood.

And so after a certain age, it's almost impossible to like perfectly replicate an accent in a foreign language that you learn and sound exactly like a native speaker.

It's like almost impossible.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's close to impossible.

Very few people can do it 100% because we can't really distinguish all of the different sounds anymore.

However, a baby can still do that, right?

They're still open to all the different sounds in the world, in the different languages, right?

So I think for that silent period where the baby is just listening, that's a different type of experience in terms of the sounds and how they're perceiving them than an adult who might not be able to perceive all the different sounds in the foreign language.

Like for me, I'm learning French.

There are some interesting vowel sounds in French that kind of sound similar and you kind of have trouble distinguishing them if you're a foreigner.

But like when a baby is hearing those sounds, they're probably going to be able to distinguish them earlier in their journey than I might be able to or maybe I'll never be able to do that.

So I think the quality of their listening, how they're perceiving sounds is just fundamentally different at that age than us as adults.

So that's a big difference, right?

They also don't filter sounds through their native language, right?

Like if you speak Spanish and you're learning French or whatever and you say, okay, the French blah blah blah sound kind of sounds like my Spanish blah blah blah sound.

You make these connections and this can affect your understanding and your speaking, your pronunciation.

That can have an effect on you.

Whereas a baby learning their first language, they're not filtering those sounds through another language.

They're not comparing it to their other language and letting that affect the way that they perceive these sounds.

They don't have that.

And so they actually learn these sounds much better than we do.

Okay, so that's very different, right?

Another thing is babies are incapable of just understanding ideas that aren't basic, okay?

They just don't have that intelligence yet, right?

If I go even to my three-year-old son, if I, you know, start talking to him about topics that are just beyond his grasp, like, you know, if I want to start talking to him about, let's say, dividends when it comes to investing in stocks, that's going to be a really hard thing to communicate to him in any language just because, you know, he's not capable of grasping that point yet, okay?

So, you know, taking that back to just, you know, children learning their first language, a lot of things that I can say to my son right now, like, you know, he might understand the words or whatever, but the idea is just way too high level for him.

So he's just incapable of understanding certain ideas.

I can't talk to him about many different subjects.

There's a limited number of subjects I can talk to him about.

I can talk to him about the eagle and its wings and things like that, right?

But not other things.

You need to baby them, as we say.

You need to talk in a very particular way about very particular topics to them for a while.

That's not like adults.

An adult, if they can't understand something in a foreign language, usually it's just because they can't understand the language.

It's not because the concept is too high level for them, right, of what's being said.

So, like, if an adult can understand those words, they can understand it, like, even if it's a complex topic like politics or whatever, right?

Whereas a baby, even if they understand the words that you're saying, they're not going to be able to understand that.

So they can't even grasp a lot of things until a later age.

So when they're just three years old, four years old, what they can actually understand and conceptualize is much smaller.

You know, that, or the amount of things, of stuff, is much smaller than what we can understand with our brain as adults, okay?

That's very different, all right?

How about speaking?

So babies, they can't even form physical words with their mouth and their voice box and their tongue and everything.

They can't even do that.

So adults, we can't do it in a foreign language because we just don't know how to say the word, but we can physically make sounds.

We can utter words and syllables.

Babies can't even do that.

They can't form actual words yet until they get, I mean, not too old, but, you know, when they're eight months old, let's say, they can't say sentences because they physically wouldn't even have that ability to do so, right?

They haven't developed that capability, right?

That's different from us.

You know, eventually those kids will be able to do that, but adults, if you teach us how to say the word, we can just say it right there.

I'm sure that's happened to you.

You have a friend who speaks German, and you say, hey, tell me how to say hello in German, and then he tells you, and then you repeat it, and then you said it, right?

That's something that a six-month-old baby can't do, right?

Or there are just certain things, like, for example, my son, even at three years old, he has trouble just enunciating the whole thing, like the store Trader Joe's, which we go to a lot.

He has trouble saying that, whereas an adult, you could probably teach a lot of adults who are learning English how to say that, just work with them with the sounds, and they'll be able to get it.

My son just hasn't developed his speaking ability enough from a physical perspective.

So those are two different things right there, right?

That's different from us.

Also, just correcting their speech.

Honestly, in my experience, it doesn't do a whole lot in the short term.

You correct them when they say something wrong, and it's like, it goes in one ear, out the other.

That can be similar to us as adults, for sure, but it's not exactly the same, I would say.

I think that an adult probably has more of a capability of internalizing, oh, okay, I made an error, and he corrected me, so I was wrong, and now I wanna try to say this.

Even if you don't say it right the next time, at least you realized that, oh, that's an error.

Your brain really draws your attention to that.

A baby learning their first language,

I don't think it works the same.

I think that they say, oh, okay, I said it this way.

Dada said it that way.

Okay, I'll say it that way, but not even that, because they don't even end up saying it like me, but they can't really conceptualize the idea of errors as well as we can.