Is Luca Lampariello's Language Learning Method a Scam? Maybe.

so no matter what method you're using
there are some basic principles of correlation easy way to learn languages based upon in which you have to stick to the first principle is to work on a daily basis or at least five days a week no one to get and no gigantic amount of work is required just 30 minutes every day one hour would be bad for the first three months it is much more effective in the long run learn every day those bit rather than spend two whole days extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence can you imagine living in a world where somebody who was getting twenty-four hours a week of intensive language practice done intensive language practice intensive study where they were just wasting their time compared to a friend of theirs who was only studying for three and a half hours per week because so dramatic was the advantage of spreading out the work being done in two little segments of 30 minutes per day if that plane were true if it were even possible for this educational claim to be true we would be living in a world we were surrounded by evidence of this when the US military trains fighting men to speak a foreign language before going into combat do you think the US military has guidelines saying oh no no no just 30 minutes per day or 1 hour per day there's no point having people buckle down and study a language intensively for six hours a day or 12 hours a day no no no 30 minutes is more effective not equally effective more effective the US military would have data because every year they have to train thousands of people in dozens of different languages United States diplomatic corps Foreign Service and many other countries that have a big budget for training their foreign sir do you think that the diplomatic Institute's of the world whether for the United Nations for a well-funded national government the United States America do you think that they recommend people only study a language for 30 minutes a day that they would claim it's more effective to spread out language learning into 30-minute chunks or even one-hour chunks this claim is so ridiculous that even if we double the numbers for one example and cut the other example in half it remains ridiculous comparing one hour of work per day to six hours of work per day with the same distribution one person working intensively on the weekend as opposed to the other person working in short spurts of time spread throughout all seven days of the week there is no comparison fundamentally language study language research language learning language practice takes time if you are able to put in twenty four hours per week you will make more rapid progress than someone who can only do three and a half hours per week you will have more depth and ability of the language you will have more understanding of the language you will have more ability fluency whatever measure you want to bring to bear here and if you doubt that prove me wrong you show me the evidence you show me the scientific or linguistic research anywhere in the world that shows that three and a half hours per week can be more effective than 24 hours per week that is just absurd that is as a dishonest atactic as the proverbial snake oil salesman and you may be able to sell that lie to suckers on the internet to casual YouTube viewers who just want an excuse for their own sort of bad habits oh oh 30 minutes a day is enough that's what the nice man on YouTube said rightly or wrongly 30 minutes per day is not the method being used by any elite university anywhere in the world it's not the method being used by elite military organizations anywhere in the world it's not the method being used by diplomatic training course or another really good example take a look at how Airlines trained flight staff people who work on airplanes in the airline industry many of them have to in you know a pretty short amount of time learn a foreign language to a pretty high level of ability do you think they have their staff working 35th day if there were actually evidence of this if if it were more effective if it were dramatically more effective to only study for 30 minutes a day don't you think don't you think huge for-profit corporations like Airlines training here myself don't you think they would notice don't you think they would care interests who then adopt that more effective method it's not more effective that's why none of those institutions do it you're just telling the audience something they want to hear learning in a natural way as natural as possible this way of getting into the real fabric of a language doesn't contemplate use of horrible and having some you know horrible handy sounds of grammar which everybody's scared of another thing that grammar books are not useful but as far as I see it it is better to use them as a point of reference or a thorough linguistical Studies eventually but not in self teaching methods I personally think that the use of these books might turn out to be a couraging sometimes this second claim even more nakedly than the first even more obviously and overtly than the first is just appealing to what the audience wants to hear and then is paradoxically insisting that because you want to hear it because it would be convenient for you to believe therefore it's more effective and more efficient as a way to learn a language and if that were true there would be evidence and if we just let ourselves think logically about it for half a second it's really impossible that there ever could be evidence of this kind now the word natural is almost always fallacious it can be used in a sincere sense you know there's a difference between a grass a lawn and a parking lot okay one may be more natural than the other but the idea that one method of learning a language is more natural than another and that grammar is the opposite of nature where is the evidence that withholding the teaching of grammar helps people to advance more quickly in the language and how could this possibly be true of all languages equally if you're learning Latin Greek pallie Sanskrit Chinese Japanese Mongolian Cree a Jib way the role of grammar and the importance of having an analytical understanding of grammatical concepts while you first memorize vocabulary can be crucially important profoundly important from day one in the study of a language and if there are exceptions to this rule I would say they're just exceptions because the target language you're studying the language you're trying to learn is so similar to your own first language that you can ignore the grammar because it's implicitly obvious to you if your first language is English and you start studying Dutch or German you know what you may be able to muddle by ignoring the grammar but even so that doesn't mean that you should that doesn't mean that there's evidence that it's advantageous for you to ignore grammatical analysis and grammatical concepts in German and then later to have to struggle to catch up and compensate for bad habits and misconceptions you've got learning language should not be a stressful that but a very pleasant one of course hopefully wherever you feel on the stretch and feel frustrated because you can recall something you just learned a few days ago relax and think that in some some time many of the problems you were beginning at that moment will be a ridiculously sometime later so what is it jets will learning language is to remember that it has to be a constant natural and pleasant way to learn this is very similar to the sort of dishonest pandering that goes on in the weight loss industry well there's a lot of scientific evidence that counting the number of calories you eat is effective that restricting and restraining the amount of food you eat by measuring it and calculating how many calories are involved that's actually effective that helps you gain weight but of course it's stressful it's unpleasant it's an annoyance it's hard work so there are all kinds of dishonest snake oil salesmen all over the internet who will want to sell you the myth the half truth the lie that you can lose weight and have great results without counting calories and of course not impossible but there is no scientific evidence to say that it will be more effective if you don't make that effort of course I mean you can learn a language with no methodology at all with no effort at all there are people who have a shipwreck no they end up marooned somewhere living with people who speak another language and after a few years go by well they somehow managed to learn the language with no textbooks and no teacher just surviving yup it's possible it's also possible to lose weight and get in shape by surviving a shipwreck too but I wouldn't wouldn't recommend it being marooned on a desert island yep it can accomplish all these things and more um but what we're talking about here is what is effective and those claims should be based on evidence and we should have the integrity to come here on YouTube and say to you both in discussing our own experience and in making generalizations about our students of a human nature on the scale of millions of people what is effective what is most effective is almost never what is most pleasant most relaxing most enjoyable part is the fundamental key to the method because it is they're literally fixes the structure of the language in your brain through the effort of we translating that language of this spare part the space can last a period arranging for three six months depending how to you structure II work I used to call your schedule is writing down some grammar notes wouldn't be bad actually the second or intermediate thing very similar to the elementary one just greeting listening running down a return flight and retranslated Alex but this base is integrated with slightly more complicated text which also have to be written down in your name language you can be translated into the language you're learning later when you start the advanced is that space at this point the course or following is finished and what do you have to do it simply watch movies with subtitles in spoken and the spoken and the written part they have plot-twist after reassuring us that the beginner level is going to be relaxing and easy and fun and the intermediate level is really just more of the same as the beginner level the twist in the plot is the advanced level according his theory is also relaxing and easy and fun my warning still stands this is somebody who was telling the audience what they want to hear he is not telling the audience what they need here I think the part of the problem with Luka is precisely that he is a polyglot who enjoys working on the simple fundamentals of a language and not doing advanced language research language study language practice he's had the honesty to admit the extent of his failure with Japanese I've also seen him reflect that today his ability to communicate in Polish is very very limited so many of the languages that he studied he only had that early thrilling ego trip of going from level zero to level one and he didn't go through the much more denigrating exhausting effort of say raising your ability in the language to being able to write a newspaper article a newspaper article that would be published for and read by native speakers of the language right that requires precision that requires a sensitivity to the fine differences in meaning between different adjectives and different verbs sounding compelling and so on a whole lot will go into that level of use of the language that never goes into the sort of phrase book knowledge that people like Luka and people like laoshu 55,000 that these kind of YouTube language celebrities seem to gloriam what they seem to find rewarding is just going from level 0 to having the level of accomplishment that you'd feel comfortable getting out in an airport talking to a taxi driver going grocery shopping and there is a sense in which that can be rewarding there is a sense in which that's an ego trip and I would also say there's a little bit of an ego trip a little bit of a reward in first cracking the code for the phonetics of a language for the writing system of being the foreigner who can really get the vowel sounds right whereas other foreigners are mispronouncing everything because they don't appreciate the language you do yeah there's a little bit of an ego trip there and when you get into the intermediate and advanced stages that ego trip is gone and the nature of the work I think is all the more exhausting and spirit breaking but we're not gonna get any kind of honesty about that here no no the fundamental problem here as I've suggested again and again is that this is someone who earns a living telling people what it is they want to hear not necessarily what it is they need to hear however I have to confess in the 21st century encouragement is very hard to come I'm not surprised at all that people are lining up to pay 60 euros per hour in a package deal to get that little bit of encouragement that little bit of guidance that little bit of positivity in their lives because learning a language in a university environment is utterly lacking in that kind of encouragement and people need it people crave it and for those of you who are learning a language without a university environment working in the doleful isolation of the library alone with your books and your audio recordings I can completely understand why people are drawn to Luca and his positive upbeat message I completely understand why people would pay this bit of money just to hear some encouraging words for a few hours here and there to try to feel some sense of positive direction and motivation as they do this really demanding and terrible task I sympathize and I can reflect on my own life and what a positive difference it would have made for me if there were just one person encouraging me to keep on studying Cambodian when I was working on Cambodian his language there were just one person helping me encouraging me in any way being kind and helpful to me when I was working on curry in a jib way tremendously difficult languages I also need encouragement when I take on the terrible task of learning a language and I'm sure that Luca is really fulfilling a very meaningful role in the lives of his students of his pupils of the people to pay him for that bit of encouragement [Music]