The rate of learning

Hello! I want to make a special video today talking about the rate of learning, the learning rate as far as languages are concerned, but not only languages.

Well, in so far as languages are concerned, we can distinguish, we can generally distinguish three phases, and this is a commonly accepted fact: the elementary phase, the intermediate phase, and the advanced phase. Right now, I just wrote ... I've just drawn this special graph here. I just bought a blackboard. I thought it was, like, a very good idea to have it, a board. And we can distinguish three phrases as I said, the commonly accepted phases. And I actually kind of agree about this. And you can tell the difference between ... you can say that ... you can tell that there is a learning rate. It means that this is the efficiency of your learning process.

In the elementary phase ... the elementary phase is ...has a few features. The ... your learning rate is slow. it means that it is not quite efficient, and this is obvious because from a scientific point of view, one can argue that the problem consists of the fact that neurons ... interactions between neurons are not activated. It means that we are still building a net here. We're just trying to figure out how ... things sound in the language. There are quite, you know, weird sounds. That's why our brains are not used to different sounds. And grammatical structures and words themselves, especially in languages that are very very different from ours, for example, Arabic or Chinese, and other difficult languages.

In the intermediate phase things start to get slightly better, but the learning rate is still a bit low. We have two zones. I can distinguish ... in general we can distinguish this zone and this other zone. It's like, low intermediate and high intermediate. And at this point,  we start figuring out a lot of things of the language, which is called the intermediate phase, but still we are not fluent yet, so called 'fluency'. I call this phase "deliberate learning".

"Deliberate learning" means that, in this phase, now we will discuss this in the next videos, each for every phase. We are doing ... we are learning deliberately. We are using books. We are using ... grammars. We are using Assmil. We are using Teach Yourself. We are using things to get accustomed to the language. They are guiding us because there are authors who wrote ... who just established patterns for us, and we're just following them. We are not autonomous.

There comes a point here, which is called the "epiphany point" in literature, where a kind of linguistic explosion happens, and you find yourself autonomous. It means that you have accumulated a lot of knowledge, and at this point, at this precise point.
Things start getting very easy. We don't know why, but that's the way it happens. That means that we have learned ... we spent hours and hours trying to figure out how the language works in the elementary phase, in the intermediate phase. I don't know how long this will take, but it will take a little bit, and depends on how much time and how much, and above all, how you learn.

So this point, which is called the "epiphany point". We could ... pass this point we could call ourselves fluent in a way, according to my vision at least. This is called the "deliberate learning", as I said. It is phase one and phase two.
And when you are linguistically autonomous, it means that you're ... you find yourself in the advanced phase. This doesn't mean that you stop learning. We never stop learning. But the thing is that, pass this point and we're autonomous. It means that we find ... for example, I'll ... let's consider Chinese. You find a word you just figured it out, a lot of characters, how they work,
and how they sound, and what they mean. And you find other characters. You put them together and you understand the meaning without consulting any vocabulary. This is called ... this is not ... this is just a small example what I mean by autonomy.

And at this point, the rate of learning is almost vertical. It's exponential because you learn things at a fast rate,
you talk to foreigners, you can retain words that you didn't retain before. At this point, people who were, like, frustrated, send me messages and they say, "why can't I just recall things?" This is the argument ... this will be the subject of another video which is ... which will have to do with memory. And you will find quite ... some ... some surprises, a few surprises there.

So all I am saying, in general this is the graph. To recap, this is the graph that explains the learning rate, and the time, and the efficiency. The learning rate as the efficiency of learning and acquiring a language. There are three main phrases.
The two main phrases are "deliberate learning". The two first phrases, which is the first, elementary, and intermediate. And the reason why a lot of people give up is because the rate is slow. The efficiency of learning is a little bit low. But depending on how much time you  dedicate to a language, and how you do it. This is very important. It is not just a matter of learning of reading and listening. And I will explain this in another video too. you will get to this point, which is called the "epiphany point". And at this point when you start talking to foreigners and reading books, all you have to do is keeping the language alive and expanding it. You will do it much more easily than you've ever done before. And this is called "linguistic autonomy".

So, I'll discuss the things ... this is just a general description of the whole process. And in the next videos I will discuss what you should do here, here, and here. So thank you so much for listening to me, and we will talk ... we'll meet up in the next videos. Bye!

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