One, two, punch: How a “bad” language learner became a polyglot

by Anastasiia

For Sebastiao, the main goal of language learning is to be able to communicate with the people around him. Over the past few years, he has learned English, Spanish and French. He believes that learning a language is a lot like boxing: you have to train yourself first. In this interview, Sebastiao tells us how he approaches language learning and what proved most important for his success.

I've been working over the last 10 years in either customer support or sales. I work at hotelier services, and we have clients from different countries. I’ve been able to communicate with customers in Portuguese, English and Spanish. About a year ago I started learning French, and I want to add it to the mix.

I started learning languages at school — English, French and Spanish — like everyone in Portugal does. I was really bad at all of them. I wasn't very good at memorizing grammar. I wasn't even engaged in the lessons. I remember failing a Spanish language exam even though it should be the easiest foreign language for a Portuguese speaker. (Editor’s note: Spanish and Portuguese have 89% lexical simialrity.) It was so difficult for me to memorize even the small stuff.

I’ve always liked languages, though. I wanted to understand our Spanish neighbors, and I wanted to learn French because I liked French culture. I just think that the type of system where you go to a class is not for everyone. You need to really pay attention and be motivated to succeed in a system like that. And when you're a kid sitting in class, you're probably thinking about other stuff like playing football with your friends.

My multilingual summers

Portugal is a multicultural society with a significant population of immigrants. We sort of have roots everywhere, and I also have family in Brussels. Every summer, when I was at the beach with my family, it was a mix of Portuguese, English and French.

When people started speaking French, I always felt a bit let out. I think, subconsciously, that gave me some motivation to get into the culture. They’d sing the pop songs of that summer or make cool references from French cinema, and I wanted to do all of that, too. The same thing happened with English because my grandmother was British and she was always watching British content and we had a British-style dinner for Christmas and Halloween. So I was engaged in languages from childhood through my family, friends, and the fact that I wanted to fit in. I think if I didn't have anyone in my life that spoke French, I would never have thought about learning it.

The fact that I can now drop a French classic song and everybody starts laughing, surprised that I know the song, keeps me going. These experiences create an extra layer of engagement and motivation for me. Even if I don't speak the language that well yet, the culture gives me extra energy to continue learning.

Listening always comes first

I think nowadays we don't need to have a great level of grammar or writing skills — all those things that we had to learn at school. Most of us just want to talk, and the most important skills for talking are listening and speaking.

For me, it's more important to be able to understand a French speaker than to understand French grammar, so I think an audio-based approach works perfectly for my goals. That’s how I got started with Glossika, when I remembered only 30-40 French words from my school days. With audio-based apps I listen to and repeat a lot of phrases and they come in handy when I'm with my French friends. Audio-based programs are great tools for someone who doesn't like to sit down but wants to improve their language skills. For example, I want to have 20 to 30 minutes of my life every day dedicated to French, and I get that with Glossika.

I wake up and, before leaving for work, I brush my teeth, make coffee, go through my morning routines, and I listen to the audio while repeating the sentences I hear out loud. In these 30 minutes I’m concentrating on French because I don't need much mental bandwidth to make a cup of coffee. I also walk 15 thousand steps every day, and I listen to French sentences while I do that. It gives me extra motivation to walk and do stuff that I need to do in my day-to-day life.

I think Glossika was a good thing for me because it made me want to clean my house! I suspect people who think Glossika’s boring are always sitting down and just looking at the text. I do that only from time to time — Glossika is normally something I use to get in a bit of language practice while I’m doing something else.

I think one of the reasons why people give up when learning a language is because they have a lot of things going on. Sometimes you just don't want to sit down and do stuff on your phone. Glossika helps with that. You can use it in your day-to-day life while doing other mundane things. That was the trick for me.

For me, doing a learning session is like meditating

I try to repeat sentences out loud as much as I can — otherwise, I'm going to daydream or think about my job.

It works like a meditation: I don't work too hard or stress if I don’t know something. I just repeat the words and try to replicate the pronunciation. Even when I’m out there on the street, I still try to practice and say sentences out loud. My girlfriend had a guest from Korea and she had never met me before. She asked my girlfriend if something was wrong with me because she thought I was talking to myself! And my girlfriend said: it’s just the way he learns languages, you know.

This was my biggest phobia when I started out — people thinking that I was crazy. Headphones help me to fight the phobia because people might think we are on the phone with someone. I think repeating things out loud is very important.

Glossika is probably the only tool in my life that I was consistent with for more than a year. I have a 147 day streak on Glossika right now! Every day I have this French speaking hour. I guess the most difficult part for every foreign language learner is to have consistency. You need to dedicate a part of your life to this language.

Three keys for every language learner

№1 Be culturally engaged

At university we had one semester of Chinese, but I had no cultural engagement at all. It's a very interesting culture but personally I didn't feel like watching Chinese movies or listening to Chinese music. But, if you are engaged in the culture — in my case that’s French — you will naturally want to learn more.

In the beginning, a lot of people ask: how many hours do I need to spend in a target language to learn it? But the thing is that, if you are culturally engaged, you won’t count the hours. I don't count how many hours I have spent in English. I just go to YouTube and watch some stand-up comedy. When you become culturally engaged, you stop counting hours. You just enjoy the process. A lot of people want to learn Spanish or Chinese because of the professional opportunities, but you won't survive in the market for more than a year if you're not culturally engaged. I see a lot of things online on forums where people want to start learning for the wrong reasons — things like trying to choose the most spoken language or the most lucrative language. But it just doesn’t work like that. I’d say if you like Latin for the sake of it, just learn Latin!

№2 Choose your input wisely

Now, I’m comfortable enough with French to listen to native podcasts on the topics I’m familiar with, like world news and geopolitics. I understand 90% of it… but, if I wanted to listen to some other topics, like bodybuilding or nutrition, I wouldn't understand it.  

I think getting native input is very important because there's, for example, informal and formal French. I feel more comfortable with formal French, but it's impossible for Glossika to teach informal French because it’s different in Canada, Belgium, and France. I think it’s up to the learner to find a podcast or YouTube channel from a specific region if they want to practice, say, the verlan, the informal French from Paris. But I'm happy with the formal French I have now. Natives may laugh because I speak very formally, but that doesn’t bother me because I understand what they're saying. I do still struggle to watch French movies if they speak street French.

When you start understanding people in real life, it’s the best feeling in the world.

Six months into the Glossika course, I was in Belgium for a few months and I was only able to slowly say something like I want this type of bread with butter or cheese. But I was so surprised when I went back to Barcelona and my French coworkers were joking with each other in the office and I sort of smiled, and my colleague looked at me and said, in clear French: you understand what I'm saying? And to my surprise, I realized that I actually did! So this was a breakthrough in six months of using Glossika. I understood a joke! That was an amazing feeling, after so many months of struggling.

№3 Language learning is a lot like boxing

Listening and input are very important in language learning. If you start to speak right off the bat, you won’t have enough vocabulary to say anything. If I had to rate the skills, I would say that listening is the most important one, then talking, and only then reading and writing. So first you need to get enough exposure, otherwise you're going to feel frustrated… like I felt when I went to Brussels (Belgium) for the first time in my life. Back then I knew about 50 words in French like baguette, metro station, and some colors. I wasn’t able to say or ask anything interesting.

Sometimes, here in Spain, I hear people who just memorized a phrase in perfect Spanish, but can’t hold the conversation that follows that phrase. That's 80% of the interactions I have with foreigners in Barcelona. Language learning is like boxing, and if you don't prepare in advance, it’s so brutal. So just prepare for the fight and train a little bit so you can survive five minutes, then ten minutes, and eventually an entire conversation. And that’s the thing about conversing! Once you reach the point where you can, you’ll never turn back. You’ll be talking, having interesting conversations and experiences, and language learning comes as a byproduct.

I see the repetitions and drills in language learning as being like a punching bag in boxing. If you're repeating out loud it's like punching a bag because you don’t have an opponent. In a real conversation, someone is going to interrupt you or say something that you're not prepared for. That’s a challenge, and it takes practice. But when you’re starting out, you train with a punching bag. And I think Glossika is the best substitute for a real conversation — what you practice with until, eventually, you’re ready to get into the ring.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.