00:14
This episode is brought to you from Masako's lab in Japan.
Just the first time we're trying this, so we'll see how this goes.
We're trying to take this episode with a single microphone and no headphones, so
apologies in advance if the sound becomes too weird, but
just, you know, you don't listen to us for sound quality.
So let's just keep on with that.
So today, we wanted to talk about
Well, this was on our list for a long time. Was it you who put it on?
I can't remember.
Yeah, I can't remember either, but in our memo, I think, we say
Oh, you have a memo saying, I want to know this.
Also, I consider myself as like a 後天的バイリンガル.
Like, I wasn't born in bilingual environment.
I learned English properly.
Like, it's not like I had zero exposure before, but
properly English environment since I'm like 14 or 13.
So like, you know, pretty, I'm not like a baby at that point.
So I'm a fully cognizant human being.
By the time I started learning English, I still remember what it was like learning English.
So I think that's a reasonable definition of 後天的.
But so, and as a person who had to learn English,
who do I think, like, what are the characteristics that make someone pick up English
or maybe just languages in general quicker than some others?
And I think I want to preface this by saying that
language acquisition does not equal intelligence, in my opinion.
Like, I think those are two very different things.
You could be dumb and be bilingual or multilingual, right?
Like, so it's not to say that this is better or worse in any way.
But in terms of just like, 何かコツっていうか
I've seen fair shares of people who are both learning English and are fluent in English
03:01
as a second language.
And I think one thing that is consistent across the people who are relatively quicker
at learning English is whether they have a strong desire to speak.
Like, do they have something they want to talk about?
Or are they in an environment that they really want to talk about something with somebody?
Or they are forced to.
Right, sometimes it's a forced thing.
But sometimes I think it's more like, it's very topic specific.
Like, maybe you don't really care about being able to speak English in general context.
But maybe specifically about your favorite musicians,
you want to be able to talk about it with people from all over the world.
Or maybe when you go to conferences with other people, other researchers,
and when they're mostly speaking English,
you feel the real strong urge to be want to be part of that conversation.
And I think people who have stronger desire for that is the one that ends up being quick.
I just recalled, in Japan, I've met several people who are very good at speaking Japanese,
although they're from, you know, like China.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it's not like English.
Yeah, in Japanese.
And then when I asked them how they managed to learn Japanese so quickly,
and so, you know, they became better,
was that they were initially very interested in Japanese culture.
And they wanted to be able to understand in Japanese.
And they learned and they became very fluent in Japanese.
I think that's huge, too.
Like, it doesn't matter what the motivation is,
but I think that motivation has to be really personal and really urgent in order for like,
that to work.
And yeah, yeah, I know some people who are very good at Japanese,
despite never have never lived in Japan or anything like that.
And yeah, many of them, their motivation is Japanese history, Japanese entertainment stuff.
So yeah, maybe.
Yeah, that's another thing.
Yeah.
But so I do feel like they have to want to talk about something.
Um, for me, personally, I remember distinctly, like the moment that like,
turned my switch on was when I moved to international school,
and we were put in like a science class for English as a non-native speaker, like ESL class.
06:09
And they were doing like gas, solid gas liquid thing, like, you know,
three like 期待、液体、固体。
And it was like, super easy for me.
Like, I've done this, like, when I was, you know, a few years ago,
and I knew exactly what they're talking about, just didn't know it in English.
And the teacher was doing the thing where you go around the room to ask,
like, he will be talking, and then every now and then he will have a question,
and then it would go to the first person and then the next.
And so it was like going around the classroom, asking questions.
And like, when it came to my turn, I didn't know the word sublime, right?
But I knew what it was.
And it was so frustrating.
Like, I felt like I'm not this dumb.
I know what they're talking about.
I was listening to you.
I know what they what what you're trying to say, but I just didn't know the word.
Or like, maybe, like, maybe I've heard of this word before,
but I like it was not part of my vocabulary yet.
And I was like, Oh, I don't know.
And then like, you know, it's fine.
Like, it's not a big deal.
Like, just move on to the next person.
And that was fine.
But like, I remember, like, for like, a 14 year old me,
that was super embarrassing moment.
And I'm gonna get better at English.
And like, because like, I, I hate it.
Because science was like the one thing that I was good at in this new English environment.
Because prior to that, in Japan, I was definitely more of a
国語歴史英語 person.
So like, it was like a new territory to me.
And that was like, the one thing I was naturally good at,
because I've done this in Japan already.
And I felt like, like, though, that one thing that I was decent at
was like, no longer that case.
And I remember, like, the fire was like,
okay, I want to be able to at least do well in science.
That was my motivation.
And I seem to like, that embarrassment seemed to be like, very deep.
Like, I still very much remember it.
Um, do you remember what you have tried after that?
So after that, I started to speak more in class.
And I think it was good because it was an ESL class.
So none of us were perfect at English.
And, and we were really encouraged.
Like, our sort of proactive effort to speak out
was very much recognized and very much rewarded.
When the final sort of grade comes in,
or sometimes when you get a feedback from the teacher,
like, you know, it doesn't matter how well or badly I did in the test,
09:04
but they will recognize that like,
yes, Asami participates in class.
And that, I think, was also new.
Like, I don't think there was ever that the participation contribution was...
I don't think there was ever a 評価塾 in my school in Japan.
I think it was mostly just tests.
Like, maybe there was like,
提出物をちゃんと時間内に出してるかみたいな。
But I don't think there was like, extra points for like, speaking up in class.
Or maybe there was, but maybe it was tiny, tiny percentage.
In that school, I think the participation grade was like 25% at that point.
It was like significant.
And I remember like, yeah, like my participation grade
was much better after I started to speak out a bit more.
And then that just meant that I made more mistakes.
But I also had more opportunities to embarrass myself.
But every embarrassment leads to learning.
Because there will be feedback.
Yeah, exactly.
Or like, they will tell me sometimes I say a thing 80% correctly.
And they will tell me, you know what?
Like, I got, I understand what you said,
but this would be a better way to say it or something, right?
And that feedback loop just helped me improve.
And because I go out of my way to make that mistake,
it's easier for them to correct me rather than
me staying quiet at the back of the room, not saying anything.
Like, if that's the case,
there's just very few opportunities for them to help me improve.
And I think that just made a big difference.
And then the more you do it, your improvement just exponentially gets better.
The acceleration of improvement rate is just like night and day.
So yeah, I think that definitely helped.
And like, the more mini embarrassments you experience,
the more numb you become to those things.
Yeah, you don't really care much.
Yeah, I think that's definitely another factor that's important.
Like, you cannot take yourself too seriously.
You should...
If you experience so many.
Right, yeah.
If you make one embarrassing moment a week,
you're gonna remember it for the rest of the week.
Exactly.
If you do 10, 100, you're not gonna remember every single one of them.
And that's fine.
And I think that just helped.
Yeah.
So like, if you make one mistake, you're gonna remember it for days after.
12:01
But if you make too many...
Let's make 100 mistakes.
Yeah, and definitely, me being at that age definitely helped, right?
Like, you know, 14s, none of us are that smart.
So it's a lot easier to do the kind of stupid things and not feel embarrassed about.
I imagine this is a lot harder as an adult or like, as a university student, something.
Maybe, especially in academia, you don't want to look dumb.
You know, that's kind of a currency, right?
Like, our intelligence is our currency here.
And looking dumb, sounding dumb is like something we fear.
But in the context of language acquisition, and probably just in general knowledge acquisition,
making lots of mini little embarrassing mistakes is probably not a bad idea.
Yeah.
Okay, let's make many, many mistakes.
Yay!
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us at aegodescience on Twitter.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
See you next time.
