The most important thing in language learning

[plym0uth2]

my problem with spanish is i keep seing the words how they are said and not spelt so i get confuesd

[aprilhope91]

Excellent¡ you are a good teacher who is aware of our needs as students, thanks a lot.



[acr33825]

Haha you can hear your german accent in your voice but nice job!

[Iceland1944]

Herr Kaufmann, thanks for the videos. They are quite informative and I like some of your ideas.

[ARVELAEZ]

Steve you're my idol..!!! I would like to know you personally

[ErklaerMirDieWelt]

hey steve,

thanks for the video! i kind of have a problem with this passive learning thing: i try to learn dutch at the moment. my mothertongue being german, i can read dutch texts and understand them without looking up words, because i can guess the words from german. this doesn't mean they are anwhere in my head though ^.^ i want to be able to communicate, but everyone here (i live in holland atm) keeps talking english to me because i can't really build sentences. do you have any tips for me?

[lingosteve]

@ErklaerMirDieWelt I had a similar experience with Portuguese which I can easily read based on Spanish. I found that after enough listening and reading I eventually built up the confidence to speak more, and to continue speaking when Portuguese people wanted to speak English. Patience.

[lingosteve]

@microlanguage If you have few words you will sound smooth with few words and yo will not understand much.It is pointless to sound smooth if you do not understand what people around you are saying, in my experience.

[Mafl001]

Fico muito satisfeito que voçê vá visitar Portugal outra vez Steve. Vai achar o norte de Portugal lindíssimo. Infelizmente não estou em Portugal senão ia la ouvir as suas conferências. Continue o bom trabalho...

[lingosteve]

@Mafl001 Obrigado.

[kayally2009]

thanks a lot for great tube ,,,,

kayally ,,

[DerReisendeGaijin]

Steve,

Any chance your lecture about language learning in the age of the iPad will be recorded?

[lingosteve]

@DerReisendeGaijin I will try.

[PZCherokee]

Yea I agree. I've been studying at LingQ for almost a year now and by reading the words after so many times of so many lessons the same words usually tend to come up. Then when I'm out and hear the language, I recognize them immediately from hearing and seeing it so much and figure out how they're used. Works waaay better than forced flashcard memorization.

And you should film your lectures! That would be wonderful to watch on your channel. And you're always going to France! lol =P

[supermaucat]

I completely disagree with Steve... phrases and sentences are much more useful.

[lingosteve]

@supermaucat It depends on how you study and what your goals are. If your main goal is to understand first, and if you spend most of your time listening and reading, then I think words are more important.

[supermaucat]

@lingosteve Steve, you might have a point. I'm a soldier who's had to QUICKLY learn 3 fairly difficult languages so far with materials from DFLIC (not sure if you know of their methods, search for it) and I found phrase and sentence method a lot more useful. Just doing the Rosetta Stone word stuff was tedious and of little advantage to me. Since humans don't speak in single word sentences, I found short phrases and sentences a lot more useful.

[Codylangaugesblog]

I think focusing on learning a bunch of words is a pretty good method. I also like to know some key phrases too! But that definitely helps in understanding the language.

[MrFremdsprache]

GOOD TO HEAR FROM YOU HERR KAUFMANN.

[8Lingua]

Unfortunately I live in a poor country and I'm very poor pliiis give me a free access to LingQ ;(

[lingosteve]

@8Lingua You can register and use the site free of charge.

[5Language]

What's the name of the Language Conference Steve? You've been missing from YT for a while lol.

[paulinobrener]

Are you going to ACTFL this year?

[lingosteve]

@paulinobrener Unfortunately not.

[illasduck]

Hey Steve, what's your opinion on "Sentence flashcards"? I tend to archive phrases/sentences rather than individual words with the goal of accumulating more words overall that way (aka the Khatzumoto method). Rather than providing individual translations I just translate the sentence as accurately as possible on the back.

I believe the fundamental difference is that with LingQ it's just word + context sentence with emphasis on individual meaning.

[illasduck]

@illasduck Actually, I guess I already know you don't like phrases, but I'm wondering what specific advantages you feel memorizing words has over memorizing sentences.

Thanks.

[nihongonojonathan]

I completely agree, thank you for another great video.

[alkantre]

It would appear I am the first to view this video. I agree: if I understand all the words in a sentence, that is the most important thing, because it means my brain will process the sentence as a Gestalt. Therefore I memorize vocab knowing it will all come back to me in a sentence in the flash of a mental epiphany.

Mr, Kaufman--how can I obtain a copy of your book in Mandarin Chinese? I just heard about this translation, and thought wow, what a good way to practice.

[lingosteve]

@alkantre Where do you live. I can send you a paper copy or an ebook copy.

[Jate0000]

@alkantre Erase that inmediately and send him a private message!

[alkantre]

@Jate0000 how do I send a private message?

[qzchris]

@alkantre If you go onto Steve's channel, next to his display picture there's a link reading "Send Message". That way you can communicate with him privately.

[Jate0000]

@alkantre Go to his account (click on lingosteve) and search for "send him a message" or something like that

[alkantre]

@Jate0000 

[alkantre]

@Jate0000 I was able to do this. thank you.