My new Prolific Learning Website

[Steve]

Over the past 7 to 8 years, I've learned much from the online community of independent language learners (including many from this site). It has sparked a complete change in my thinking about learning in general and not just for language learning.

I applied my background as a scientist and analyst to understanding why some people were successful language learners and why some (including myself) were not. Basically, I wanted to actually have some real language skills to show for the work I was putting in. As I observed the most successful language learners, the first thing I saw was the differences in approaches. As I looked more carefully, I realized there were some common themes underlying what they did. The primary thing is that their learning could be characterized as both *enjoyable* and *effective*. Over time, I started to see patterns as to what made learning enjoyable and effective. This came from a combination of reading academic articles on brain function and learning as well as reading the many anecdotes shared on this site and others.

I had an epiphany moment (or perhaps a Homer Simpson Doh! moment) in which I realized that this explained those things in life I had been very successful at. I went from thinking that "talent" and "intelligence" was the primary driver of exceptional learning to thinking that using appropriate methods and principles was the primary driver. I also tried experimenting with these principles to pick up some art skills and music skills and was quite pleased and surprised at the results. I'm now at a point after years of slowly reflecting on this and analyzing it that I'm ready to share my current understanding of things. I see this as a starting point rather than a culmination. I approached this an analyst meaning that with what information I had available, I'd take my best guess so as to be able to start doing something practical with it. Basically it is what I am using as a basis for learning in my life. I've decided to share it with others.


The first presentation of what I've been putting together is my website. This contains an overview and summary of things. The second presentation is an upcoming book which I'm planning on self-publishing via Amazon KDP in the next few months (if all goes well). The book has much more detail than the website. In the larger context, the website and book are meant to support my attempt to start a business making money from workshops, seminars, and consulting. I want to turn this into a consulting business helping organizations adopt these principles into their training programs. In the US, employee training is nearly a $100 billion per year endeavor. I'd like to try to get in on that piece of the action and help people to start seeing enriching things happen in their lives.

Anyway, the site is at prolific-learning.com (https://www.docstuve.com/prolificlearning), please feel free to look around.

[David1917]

I like it. I would also suggest focusing on "life-long learning" and "adaptability." Those to me are the buzzwords of the changing global landscape/globalization. The career you entered into in 1989 might be obsolete by 2019, with an exponentially shorter lifespan on some careers beginning this year. So learning "how to learn" so that it can be enjoyable and not some horrid reminder of the first 21 years of your life is what will certainly keep someone happy and prosperous in the 21st century. Discovering languages and all that the online community has done for me in this regard has been integral to my own joy and success, so I'm glad to see you've found a way to pass it along.

[tommus]

Very interesting initiative. I look forward to the discussion your web site and your ideas will generate here.

In your article "Focus on consistent progress", you state "One of the biggest hindrances to consistent progress is setting explicit goals and deadlines." And you later say "We need to learn to measure (and treasure) the consistent progress we make as something becomes more and more familiar and we become better and better at doing it". These statements seem to be in contradiction to each other. How can you measure progress without something explicit to measure? Yes, you may feel you are getting better at learning a language. But especially at and beyond about the B2 level, there is an extensive plateau where it is very difficult to perceive progress, let alone measure it. At times, you may even perceive that you are regressing. A plateau might last for several years. How do you suggest measuring your progress during the plateau period?

Perhaps related to my previous question, I fully agree with you that the key to spending the many hours (and years) learning and improving a language is to enjoy it. That could mean you enjoy the learning process itself for its own sake. Or probably more effective, you enjoy what you are able to do (and learn) in the language, such as reading scientific material, exploring new societies and cultures, enjoying your favourite type of fiction, etc. Or a mixture of reasons. But if, on the other hand, you find it boring, tedious, difficult, etc., and you don't look forward to doing it each day, then you might as well stop now. Language learning should be (or become) one of your most enjoyable hobbies, pass times, or even your favourite work. It is like anything else you do. If you like it, you will do more of it, more often, and you will get good at it.

[tommus]

Steve, I have a question related to your PhD in Solid State Physics. The question may also relate to aptitude in language learning.

Physicist Richard Feynman is often credited with saying "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." Various versions of this quote pop up, and sometimes it is attributed to others. In any case, a person might say that they think they understand language learning, yet they might well be using very inefficient and ineffective methods to study a language and improve in a language. It is probably difficult to measure.

But more specifically about quantum mechanics, it has a different problem. QM is not logical. It is not intuitive. In fact, it generally does not make sense. But it works. It works very well. The related phenomenon, quantum entanglement, is very hard to believe. Even Einstein found it troubling. So my question would be: Do you think that a very logical mind may actually be an impediment to learning QM?

Back to language learning. Do you think there may be personality types that are an impediment to language learning? For example, could a logical person find that much of a target language is illogical, making it more difficult to absorb? Could a perfectionist get discouraged too early because they cannot speak or write a target language well? Most likely a shy person may have challenges to learn to speak and listen well but find reading to be very easy. Most likely a gregarious person may excel at conversation but may struggle in reading and writing. As you apply your Prolific Learning techniques to language learning, there will be lots of interesting challenges. All the best with these endeavours. I trust that LLorg will follow your progress with interest.

[Steve]

I like it. I would also suggest focusing on "life-long learning" and "adaptability." Those to me are the buzzwords of the changing global landscape/globalization. The career you entered into in 1989 might be obsolete by 2019, with an exponentially shorter lifespan on some careers beginning this year. So learning "how to learn" so that it can be enjoyable and not some horrid reminder of the first 21 years of your life is what will certainly keep someone happy and prosperous in the 21st century. Discovering languages and all that the online community has done for me in this regard has been integral to my own joy and success, so I'm glad to see you've found a way to pass it along.

I appreciate your helpful and encouraging feedback. I just realized that while the book discusses and encourages lifelong learning to some degree (and is in the working title), I rarely explicitly mentioned that much on the web pages. I'll remedy that going forward.

Adaptability is a good observation that I really hadn't much about. I had been focusing more on helping individuals overcome the limitations they often feel about themselves. I had intentionally been steering people away from external pressures to learn which often elevate stress levels and force the use of short cuts such as cramming to meet deadlines and requirements. My initial thoughts were to help people focus on learning things for self-enrichment and fun rather than vocation. The idea being that people are more likely to learn how to relax and learn enjoyably and effectively doing something for a diversion or recreation rather than for a vocation. Once you've successfully learned to learn on things for fun, it will be easier to apply those things to something more serious. At least that's the logic behind my thinking.

[Steve]

Very interesting initiative. I look forward to the discussion your web site and your ideas will generate here.

In your article "Focus on consistent progress", you state "One of the biggest hindrances to consistent progress is setting explicit goals and deadlines." And you later say "We need to learn to measure (and treasure) the consistent progress we make as something becomes more and more familiar and we become better and better at doing it". These statements seem to be in contradiction to each other. How can you measure progress without something explicit to measure? Yes, you may feel you are getting better at learning a language. But especially at and beyond about the B2 level, there is an extensive plateau where it is very difficult to perceive progress, let alone measure it. At times, you may even perceive that you are regressing. A plateau might last for several years. How do you suggest measuring your progress during the plateau period?

You've hit one of the points I'm still figuring out how to best explain and give guidance on. In hindsight, I definitely need to clarify this on the web site.

This is related to how we define quality of learning. The typical approach in education is pretending that some numerical measurement is somehow objective. Someone takes their best guess at what a student should know and makes a list of those things. They then figure out a schedule about how to fit it all in. Then someone takes their best guess about how to measure how well students "know" or "understand" this list. Then someone figures out how best to teach that list to students so they can get the best possible measurements as quickly as possible. Then students take the measurement and get rated compared to each other on how their numerical measure turns out. This is ultimately a series of subjective things piled together to give the impression of something objective. The best feature of this approach is that it is easy to apply to masses of students and easy to understand the final results.

I think a more useful definition of quality for self-learning is this: quality is the difference between a broadway production of a musical compared to a high school performance. All the lines might be delivered correctly and all the notes sung on time and in tune. However, there is a huge difference. In the same way the performance of some piece of music by a national symphony orchestra and a college band differ even though each may be performed correctly. Quality in language learning for me is how much I enjoy watching a show on Netflix in Spanish. Do I get engrossed in the show and forget I'm using Spanish? or am I constantly being interrupted because I don't understand something? As I learn how to paint, do I want to hang a painting on my wall or just re-use the canvas and not let anyone see it? As I learn to play piano, am I comfortably playing music I like or not?

Ultimately, it is this difference in measures of quality that guides my mindset as to what constitutes progress. I think to some extent the measure of quality we each use will be somewhat different for each of us. I think that the critical thing is that any measures we use are somehow a direct measure of what we want to be doing. For example, counting the number of pages of Spanish I can read in an hour is a somewhat direct measure of what I want to do. However, knowing myself, I run the risk of starting to intentionally speed up and sacrifice quality for speed. I've not done it, but perhaps a useful measure for my TV watching would be to set a timer and write down how long I can watch before having to stop and look something up. By recording all the intervals in an hour of watching, that might be something over time that gives a reasonable measure of my progress since it is directly measuring what I want to be doing.

Perhaps related to my previous question, I fully agree with you that the key to spending the many hours (and years) learning and improving a language is to enjoy it. That could mean you enjoy the learning process itself for its own sake. Or probably more effective, you enjoy what you are able to do (and learn) in the language, such as reading scientific material, exploring new societies and cultures, enjoying your favourite type of fiction, etc. Or a mixture of reasons. But if, on the other hand, you find it boring, tedious, difficult, etc., and you don't look forward to doing it each day, then you might as well stop now. Language learning should be (or become) one of your most enjoyable hobbies, pass times, or even your favourite work. It is like anything else you do. If you like it, you will do more of it, more often, and you will get good at it.

You nailed it.

Steve, I have a question related to your PhD in Solid State Physics. The question may also relate to aptitude in language learning. Physicist Richard Feynman is often credited with saying "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." Various versions of this quote pop up, and sometimes it is attributed to others. In any case, a person might say that they think they understand language learning, yet they might well be using very inefficient and ineffective methods to study a language and improve in a language. It is probably difficult to measure.

But more specifically about quantum mechanics, it has a different problem. QM is not logical. It is not intuitive. In fact, it generally does not make sense. But it works. It works very well. The related phenomenon, quantum entanglement, is very hard to believe. Even Einstein found it troubling. So my question would be: Do you think that a very logical mind may actually be an impediment to learning QM?

Back to language learning. Do you think there may be personality types that are an impediment to language learning? For example, could a logical person find that much of a target language is illogical, making it more difficult to absorb? Could a perfectionist get discouraged too early because they cannot speak or write a target language well? Most likely a shy person may have challenges to learn to speak and listen well but find reading to be very easy. Most likely a gregarious person may excel at conversation but may struggle in reading and writing. As you apply your Prolific Learning techniques to language learning, there will be lots of interesting challenges. All the best with these endeavours. I trust that LLorg will follow your progress with interest.

One of the principles I observed is that our individual differences play a large role in our learning. What works well for one person may not work at all for another. I go back to the Gallup StrengthsFinder as a reference for my thinking on this. (I'm referring to their old one from a decade or more ago. They have a newer version now.) They identified about 3 dozen preferred working and thinking traits people have. Taking their survey would give you a list of your strongest five traits. I like their work in that their method of measurement yields a near unique result for every person. This is unlike the standard personality surveys which allege that there are some small number of personality or learning types. The DISC, Enneagram, and Myers-Briggs types of surveys try to fit everyone into a few discrete and different categories. I think the reality is that something like the StrengthsFinder more clearly indicates the very wide range of differences between people. Depending on the person, some methods of learning will fit their strongest traits and others will not. To the extent that some method we are using fits our traits (and is appropriate for our stage of progress), it is more likely to be enjoyable and effective than if it does not fit our preferred traits.

With regard to QM and physics, my observation is that the most important thing is having both the ability to abstract things and the ability to comfortably jump between the abstract and the concrete. The last time I touched QM was decades ago so I'm pretty rusty. However, what remains in my head is about QM is ultimately that our macroscopic intuition (formulated at the speeds and sizes of things we experience in daily life) does not readily apply to microscopic things. It's sort of like trying to apply our intuition of English grammar to a language like Greek. Our fairly strict SVO intuition will no longer apply as a general rule.