How to Learn Any Language From Zero to Fluent (The Complete Guide) – Transcript

00:00How long have you been trying to learn a language? 6 months, 2 years, 5 years? Maybe you started in school and you're still not fluent. How much can you actually speak? Be honest. If I put you on the spot right now and ask you to say 10 sentences in your target language without looking anything up, could you do it? Because here's the reality of it.

00:2190% of people who try to learn a language never even make it to a level where they can have a basic conversation. 90%. And that means that if you're watching this right now, statistically, you're probably going to fail. And it's not because you're bad at languages or because you don't have the talent. It's because nobody ever showed you how to do it properly. So, in this video, I'm going to show you everything, the complete system, everything you need

00:48to do to learn a language fast and actually speak it fluently, step by step. Nothing left out. what to learn, which order, how to practice it, how much time it takes, what your day should look like, what happens in week one, week two, month two, month three, etc.

01:06And of course, what to do when you get stuck. And if you stay until the end, I'll show you a couple more things, too. First, the one technique that lets you understand native speakers, including native speaker content like films and podcasts, YouTube videos, way earlier than everyone else. And second, the reason why most people who get to an intermediate level stay stuck there for the rest of their lives. And also, I'll

01:31show you how to get out of it. My name is Mikuel. I speak 12 languages and I developed a fast and efficient language learning system in the innovation center of the University of Doto here in San Sebastian. I've helped thousands of people learn languages fast. And I'm not going to give you some motivational speech about believing in yourself and enjoying the process. None of that nonsense. This is not about learning

01:56languages effortlessly the lazy way. This is hard work and most people won't do it. And that's exactly why most people fail. But if you do the work, it works and you'll get results. So let's get started. But first, I need to talk about some myths about language learning, some lies that you've been told. because almost everything you've been told about language learning is either incomplete or at worst it's actively keeping you stuck. And myth

02:23number one is that you need to study grammar to speak a language. This is the biggest nonsense in language education. Think about it. When you were 2 years old, did your mom sit you down with a textbook and explain the grammar rules?

02:37Did she give you multiple choice exercises, conjugation tables, all of that? No, of course not. You learned by listening to the language and repeating sentences out loud over and over again and by getting corrected. People corrected your mistakes until you got it right. That's how you learned your native language. Nobody gave you a grammar textbook before you could talk.

02:58And you speak your native language perfectly. And yet, how do most people try to learn a foreign language? They study tenses and theory and grammar rules, conjugation tables. They do fill in the blank exercises. And after years of that, they still freeze the moment a native speaker asks them a simple question. That's actually most people in Spain after years and years of English classes in school. They know the rules, they pass exams, most of them, but they

03:25can't have a basic conversation. It's really, really bad. And I know this from experience. And it's not only for English because I did four years of French classes at university as well. four full years, not four months, four years with grammar tables, conjugation trails, all of that. And at the end of those four years, my French was basically non-existent. I had passed the exams, but completely incompetent at

03:50conversations. Nothing. Zero. And I can't really think of anyone from that class being able to speak French after 4 years. Because in real conversations, you don't have 30 seconds to remember the grammar rules and search for the vocab and fill the gaps. By the time you've retrieved the rule and applied it, the conversation has moved on without you. So you don't need to study grammar. Grammar is a side effect of language learning, not a prerequisite.

04:17Does that mean grammar is completely useless? No, of course not. You can use it like a dictionary. When you have a doubt, you look it up. That's fine. But it shouldn't be the center of your learning. That's a waste of time. The next myth that we need to tackle is that streaks in certain apps make you fluent.

04:35No, they don't. Let me ask you something. How many people do you know who actually got fluent using apps with streaks and cute animals? Zero, right? Yeah, that's what I thought. Those apps are designed to be addictive, not effective. They gify learning because it keeps you coming back, not because it makes you fluent. So, you get points and levels, streaks, all those little rewards and of course the cute animals

05:02with the colors. All of that is designed to give you a very satisfying feeling of progress, but you're not learning a language. You're playing a video game disguised as language learning. And here's how you can check if the app you're using is actually working. What can you do in the language now that you couldn't do a month ago? Can you have a basic conversation? If the answer is no and you've been using the app every single day religiously keeping the streak alive for months, then you've

05:30been wasting your time. Imagine you've been learning something, practicing every single day for 500 or 1,000 days in a row. That's several years, by the way, and you still can't do it. You're still completely incompetent. The logical conclusion would be that the system is useless, right? Especially if millions of other people are getting the same results as you. That's really all you need to know about gamified apps.

05:53And finally, we need to debunk another myth. And this is the one that's causing the most damage. To learn a language, you just need to immerse yourself and you'll learn naturally. Comprehensible input. Just watch YouTube videos in Spanish. You need more immersion. You need more comprehensible input. You need a silent period of 6 months. All of that nonsense sounds nice, but it doesn't work. Rather, it works incredibly slowly

06:21and only for some aspects of language learning. It doesn't work for speaking. And I know what some of you are thinking. But Michael, why do you hate comprehensible input so much? I don't hate comprehensible input. I read more than a 100 books a year in a dozen languages. I do a lot of reading and listening in all the languages I've learned. But I'm realistic. I didn't learn to speak by reading and listening.

06:45I learned to speak by speaking. Then I can tell you exactly what happens if you only do input because I've done it before. After those four useless years of French classes studying grammar, I went all in with comprehensible input. I live right next to the French border. We got French TV here, so I watched French TV every single day. I put French radio on in the background. I read magazines and eventually also read real books, not

07:11graded readers, real books by native speakers for native speakers. I read over 100 books in French, thousands and thousands of hours of input. And the results in terms of comprehension were really good. I could read French as fast as I read Spanish, Basco, or English. I could understand native speakers talking at full speed. No subtitles, no problem.

07:32But then every single time I was face to face with a French person, something strange happened. I understood every single word they said to me, but I couldn't produce a single sentence back. I just couldn't speak. And this wasn't one or two awkward encounters. By the way, this kept happening for years over and over again. Full comprehension, but almost no ability to speak. And that's when I came to a conclusion that makes a lot of people in the internet very

07:58uncomfortable. Massive amounts of comprehensible input on its own does not teach you how to speak a language. It helps you understand, but understanding and speaking are two completely different skills built through two completely different kinds of practice.

08:13And there's another problem as well. For so-called comprehensible input to be actually comprehensible, you need to know at least 90% of the words you're hearing. Otherwise, it's not comprehensible input. It's basically noise. So, if it only works when you already know most of the words, it's not a very effective way to learn your words, is it? Passive immersion is like trying to learn to swim by watching Olympic swimmers on TV. You can watch all day. If you're really into swimming,

08:40you might even learn something useful, but unless you practice properly, you're still going to drown when you jump in the pool. And let me be clear, reading and listening are good. The more the better. They're great for reviewing what you already know. But if your goal is to speak, input alone is not enough. Here's what I need you to understand. You can max out your listening comprehension and still freeze the moment someone asks you

09:05a question. I've seen it happen hundreds of times. People consume thousands of hours of content and then they open their mouth and nothing comes out. I even worked with professional translators who could read and write perfectly in English better than most native speakers. And before calls with clients, they'd come to me and say, "Can you do the talking because I can't really speak English. I can only read and write." They were terrified of speaking because they weren't used to

09:33speaking. They had lots of practice reading and writing, but not speaking. and reading, writing, listening, and speaking are different skills and you get good at what you practice. Remember that. So, if grammar doesn't work, most apps don't work and watching videos doesn't teach you how to speak. What does actually work? Well, to answer that, you first need to understand what speaking actually is because most people don't understand this. Speaking is a physical skill. It's not just about knowing the words. It's not about

10:01knowing the grammar rules. [clears throat] Your mouth needs to get used to producing the sounds of the language in a way that's natural and comfortable. And some of those sounds are probably very different from the sounds in your own language. And like any other skill like sports or playing an instrument, you need to practice actively. You need more reps. Otherwise, it's impossible. The same way watching sports doesn't make you good at sports or going to concerts doesn't make you good at playing music. Listening to a

10:28language doesn't make you good at speaking it because listening is recognition. Your brain is decoding something that's already there. Speaking is retrieval. Your brain has to generate something from nothing in real time under pressure with almost no time to think. Recognition and retrieval are not the same thing. And you can train one of them for thousands of hours and it will do almost nothing for the other one. And speaking isn't even one skill. It's at least three different skills combined.

10:56And you need to trade all three. The first one is fluency. Everyone confuses fluency with speaking well. But specifically, fluency means speaking with ease. Being able to say what you want to say without having to think too much about it. Forming complete sentences without stumbling, without running out of words, without going blank. That's fluency. The second one is pronunciation. Sounding as close as possible to a native speaker. And here's something interesting. You can speak

11:23very fluently with terrible pronunciation. There are tons of people who speak very fluently with a strong accent and pronunciation matters. People need to understand you and knowing the correct pronunciation also helps you understand other people better. But fluency should be the priority. Being able to say what you want to say. And finally, the third one is accuracy.

11:41Using the right words and the correct grammar in the right context. Making as few mistakes as possible. So three things. thinking fast enough in the language to say what you want to say, being understood when you speak, and saying it with a minimum number of mistakes possible. And each one of these needs specific exercises. And I'm going to give you all of them in this video.