The document discusses factors that influence beliefs about learning difficult languages. It argues that perspectives on learning impact motivation. Breaking large concepts like language learning into smaller progressions makes them seem less daunting. Seeing others succeed and having guidance that builds confidence in one's abilities also influence beliefs about what is possible to learn. The document aims to show that anyone can learn even very challenging languages by addressing mindsets that may limit beliefs in one's learning potential.
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Original Title
Can you learn the hardest language in the world- - Irina Pravet - TEDxOtaniemiED - YouTube
The document discusses factors that influence beliefs about learning difficult languages. It argues that perspectives on learning impact motivation. Breaking large concepts like language learning into smaller progressions makes them seem less daunting. Seeing others succeed and having guidance that builds confidence in one's abilities also influence beliefs about what is possible to learn. The document aims to show that anyone can learn even very challenging languages by addressing mindsets that may limit beliefs in one's learning potential.
The document discusses factors that influence beliefs about learning difficult languages. It argues that perspectives on learning impact motivation. Breaking large concepts like language learning into smaller progressions makes them seem less daunting. Seeing others succeed and having guidance that builds confidence in one's abilities also influence beliefs about what is possible to learn. The document aims to show that anyone can learn even very challenging languages by addressing mindsets that may limit beliefs in one's learning potential.
0:09since and all you have to do is answer 0:12are you ready okay first question there is 0:18can you learn the answer yes or no on your head 0:22and the second question can you learn the hardest language in the world did 0:30you see what happened there 0:32maybe you weren't too sure with that second one wasn't as easy as the first 0:35did you say no did you say maybe 0:39did you say probably i don't know because if you did then you just 0:44experience with the majority of foreigners feel when they come to 0:47Finland excited ready to learn Finnish and then everyone tells them it's really 0:53hard language and the the grammar is impossible 0:57it will take you years and so what I want to do today is I want to 1:03deconstruct this question a little bit and then I want to talk about three 1:07things that I think influence how we answer this question because I don't 1:12really think the answer has anything to do with your ability and at the same 1:19time I want to reassure the fins in the room that this is also a discussion for 1:22you 1:23so I'm going to go through a bit of a language coaching exercise there's going 1:28to be a lot of questions for the things you can pretend it's another language if 1:31you want or you can just try to empathize and see what it's like for for 1:35us at the same time i'm going to use some examples from gymnastics coaching 1:41because that's also something i do and it puts learning in a bit more of a 1:44visual context 1:46so the first part of the question is why learn because sometimes we get so 1:53wrapped up in the subject that we're learning that we forget all about the 1:57process but luckily her our speakers haven't forgotten about that today so 2:01we've talked a lot about that i wanted to show the process by asking people on 2:06facebook 2:07what words do you associate with learning and this is what they told me 2:12so the process in itself 2:14can be really really in reach enriching as well of understanding commitment 2:19dedication motivation knowledge 2:21curiosity so then why learn the hardest language in the world 2:27why not do something else with our time the fair question but the short answer 2:33is because it will transform you 2:37you might feel like you're stuck in one personality one language one way of 2:43seeing the world but once you experience life and the world your world from a 2:50completely different side of yourself you'll see a side of yourself 2:54that's not bound by social obligations or the well-rehearsed habits that you 3:00have in daily life 3:02you'll see more of who you really really are and language is just as universal 3:07concept is learning and just as unavoidable as breathing sleeping eating 3:15as humans we all have a deep desire to be understood and to understand one 3:21another 3:22so let's move on to these three these three factors that i told you about 3:30first of which is perspective and I guess my phone changed from the previous 3:35slide 3:36got to adapt so what if i told you that your your strengths don't impact what 3:43you can or can't do 3:44they only focus how you're going to do it so that you keep on doing what you 3:49like to do and then you keep on learning whether for you that means experimenting 3:55with a new recipe doing science experiments in your garage or playing 4:00the violin 4:01how do you love to learn because i'm willing to guess that whether you 4:08realize it or not you use progressions in your learning and progressions can be 4:12thought of as the trees that make up this forest 4:17it's basic 4:18when you take one process and you break it down into little pieces and then you 4:23practice those little pieces on their own and then you put them back together 4:26and you've learned something no 4:28so let's take a visual example it's gonna get a little wild so bear with me 4:32from my gymnastics background so the cartwheel 4:37I've been told to rearrange my shirt yes you hear me ok so the cartwheel is a 4:42really really cool scale because we use one word cartwheel just say arms up by 4:48your ears 4:49keep your back in Legs relatively straight as you lower your hands onto 4:52the ground lift up your back leg push off this other leg split your legs and 4:56then square your hips dont forget to point your toes and I skipped a couple 4:59steps so don't forget don't I mean don't worry if that didn't make any sense to 5:03you 5:04it wasn't supposed to it just goes to show that there's really no such thing 5:07as being talented at doing a cartwheel 5:10because what people who are doing cartwheels are actually doing are a 5:14series of progressions all synchronized to look like one thing and when we asked 5:21okay so what's the first progression here and you might be actually be 5:25interested to know 5:25fun fact about cartwheels so the first step is just shifting your weight from 5:31your feet to your hands and back onto your feet again 5:34so it has nothing to do with throwing your legs over your head and actually 5:39you don't even have to do it in a straight line that comes much later 5:41actually 5:42so what I'm going to do is I'm going to do that car wheel again but i want you 5:49to see the trees that make up the forest 5:52so if the cartwheel is the forest and the shifting of the weight is the trees 5:55that's the progression so look for it as I shift my weight from my feet to my 6:00hand to my feet again so i hope you never see the cartwheel the same way 6:07again and just realize that these principles also apply to language 6:10learning 6:11yes we have cartwheel and then we have language learning that's a really big 6:14concept but at the same time the bigger the concept 6:18the more flexibility you have in terms of how you break that down 6:22how you choose your progressions based on how you love to learn 6:25there's a lot of talk in language learning 6:29I motivation is the key to doing anything and that's been mentioned 6:33tonight as well but motivation doesn't happen in a vacuum and I actually think 6:39that the true source of your motivation is your belief about whether or not you 6:44can actually do that thing 6:46so loop sorry do you believe you can learn 6:49do you believe you can learn Finnish or the hardest language in the world 6:53because whether you think you can or can't either way you're right and that's 6:59what Henry Ford said and when I think he was talking about is that if we don't 7:04control our beliefs or find a way to control them then they're going to 7:08control us so we need to bring awareness we need to break down this question 7:12further because I warned you there would be lots of question and figure out what 7:17is it that we really believe and how can we influence those beliefs 7:21so let's go do past experiences 7:25show me that I can so as a gymnastics coach if my girls don't believe that 7:30they can cartwheel 7:32they're not even going to try it happens every week so it's up to me to cook up 7:35experiences to show to them that they can and most of the time it works out 7:42really well with progressions because they don't even realize that they're 7:45learning cartwheels they just think they're jumping over blocks are doing 7:50somewhere kind of break dancing thing in a circle which is what that cartwheel 7:53looks like that i was talking about earlier 7:54so um how do I feel when I try because even if I'm super super motivated i have 8:02all the reason in the world to learn Finnish if I get stuck in that 8:06uncomfortable feeling the beginning steps of learning where everything feels 8:09really hard and you just realize how clumsy and bad you are you might give up 8:13right been in there and when it comes to this specific task in Finland learning 8:18Finnish everyone speaks English anyway right 8:21so I know this because i also started out in 2010 learning Finnish right here 8:28well not right here right right here in some pathetic and 8:32you know I realized that the words that are coming out of my mouth 8:35we're not what other people were saying they sounded clumsy and I got this 8:39really weird habit of speaking with a really high-pitched voice and everyone 8:43would ask me why I would speak that way when i was speaking finished so I get 8:46really embarrassed and then i would start whispering or mumbling and then 8:51people couldn't even hear what I was saying 8:53and as embarrassing as these experiences were in the beginning and it took me a 8:57while to overcome that 8:59um it pales in comparison to how I would feel when I would go to a party 9:04hang out with some friends and say okay look I'm having this normal life in 9:07Finland things are coming together and all of a sudden the language would 9:11switch from English to finish and I had no idea what was going on 9:15so studies have actually shown that if we feel socially rejected or socially 9:21isolated the same areas are active in our brains as when we feel physical pain 9:27think about that for a second because for me that was a huge light bulb moment 9:33and I realized that the reason that I kept trying to learn Finnish was because 9:38the alternative was so much worse than that short-term discomfort 9:43it just kept pushing me even when I didn't know if I actually could 9:47or how I would be doing that a lot of those things you have to figure out as 9:50we go now are others doing it successfully 9:54this is a great question because ultimately we want to know if that thing 9:57we set out to do is possible at all right 10:00and then once we start seeing that people are indeed doing it 10:03you probably heard myths about foreigners are not myths but like tables 10:07of foreigners learning Finnish right then we want to know if it's possible 10:10for us 10:11so you want to watch out for that little voice in your head that goes oh it's 10:15easy for her 10:16easy for her to do cartwheels because she was probably born in romania and 10:20she's really short and flexible born flexible I don't know 10:25so it's okay to have those sides because we all have them I do and I'm really 10:30I'm sure that most of you do to all of you but the problem is when we start 10:34believing them because remember that your strength determine how we are going 10:38to do something not whether or not you could do it and you'd actually be right 10:43about two out of three of those things and none of them had anything to do with 10:46why I can cartwheel for the record 10:48so are others encouraging me to do it and this is where we start to see with 10:53this question and the previous one as well about people doing it successfully 10:56that the beliefs are not only individual 11:00we also have collective beliefs and it's good to ask how much of these 11:06conversations happening around the finnish language and it being really 11:09difficult 11:10how much of them are based on the objective reality that for you 11:14learning this will be really hard and how much of them are just a 11:18self-fulfilling prophecy from being told from the very beginning 11:22this is going to be so hard because remember your own hesitations with that 11:26second question right 11:27can you learn the hardest language in the world so as much as I like to 11:33compare cartwheels and learning Finnish i have to say that there is no 11:39environment right now or we have to kind of question and look at the environment 11:43for learning Finnish because there is no gym where we can put up some building 11:48blocks and just learn Finnish in the same way that we do with gymnastics and 11:54yes there are language courses and they will give you basic knowledge that you 11:58definitely definitely need but to get to the kind of ease and comfort that we can 12:03only dream of having and finish one day that requires more than individual 12:07effort that requires community and basically a life in Finland at least 12:13partially and finish 12:15so then we get this kind of catch-22 problem 12:19so how do i get a life and finish if I don't speak Finnish 12:23and how am I going to learn Finnish if I don't have a place to speak it 12:27that's a question in the name and that's actually why I'm here today because I 12:32believe that there will be as many solutions to this problem or two answers 12:36to this question as there are people in this room and I think that we need to 12:41start talking and sharing our ideas about how to do these things and then 12:45solutions will come 12:46so today I invite you to start a conversation with your friends with your 12:53family 12:54between foreigners and fins together and with yourself because we need to answer 13:03we need to address our beliefs as well 13:05collectively and individually and each and every one of us as we've said many 13:09times tonight needs to figure out how is it that we learn and also what is it 13:15that we love to do because when we start doing those things for ourselves and 13:20then we start doing those things together 13:22that's how we're going to figure out how to do these things and finish as well 13:26so Tim donor said that language is about conversing with people and looking 13:34beyond cultural boundaries defining a shared humanity 13:37so why don't we start with that shared humanity because in my experience the 13:42people who moved to Finland are a lot more finished than you may think I see 13:47some nodding over there 13:49we all went through the same whether the same darkness but the only thing missing 13:54are the words to share in an identity and to connect over an identity in the 14:01same way the fins do an identity built around language but don't get me wrong 14:07this is not a question of immersion or integration problems 14:12this is more of an identity crisis that affects us all 14:15each and every one of us so the good news is i think it can be solved and the 14:22way that it can be solved is by finished people sharing 14:25share with us your unique point of view share with us your language because the 14:30English language 14:32I cannot properly articulate the finish way of thinking but that way of thinking 14:38is so beautifully crystallized in the finnish language 14:41I can't even tell you because I didn't understand it myself until I experienced 14:46it as a Finnish speaker so just imagine what this country would look like if 14:52everyone who chose to come here 14:54I felt at home here and if we didn't have to feel like we proved we have to 14:59prove that we belong 15:01every time we open our mouths to speak so this is where opportunity life in a 15:06small country celebrated for having the most innovative education system in the 15:10world 15:11what if we put as much focus on finish as we did on engineering this reality of 15:19a language that we share and an identity that we share is well within our grasp 15:25all we need to do is collectively reach for it and get past this question of can 15:32can what can I learn Finnish you know 15:34and together start designing the environments where people teach each 15:38other where people share and do what they love to do and learning just 15:41happens as a result 15:43so I'm going to ask you one more time can you learn the hardest language in 15:49the world and what are you going to do about it 15:52thank you