How to Learn Any Language in Six Months by Chris Lonsdale (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript and summary of Chris Lonsdale’s talk titled “How to Learn Any Language in Six Months” at TEDxLingnanUniversity conference.

In this TEDx talk, Lonsdale argues that anyone can learn a second language in six months by focusing on relevant content and using the language as a tool. He cites research to support his claim that comprehensible input is key to language acquisition.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Chris Lonsdale – Managing Director, Chris Lonsdale & Associates

The people in the back, can you hear me clearly? Okay, good.

Have you ever held a question in mind for so long that it becomes part of how you think? Maybe even part of who you are as a person?

Well I’ve had a question in my mind for many, many years and that is: How can you speed up learning? Now, this is an interesting question because if you speed up learning, you can spend less time at school. And if you learn really fast, you probably wouldn’t have to go to school at all.

Now, when I was young, school was sort of okay but…I found quite often that school got in the way of learning so I had this question in mind: How do you learn faster? And this began when I was very, very young, when I was 11 years old, I wrote a letter to researchers in the Soviet Union, asking about hypnopaedia, this is sleep-learning, where you get a tape recorder, you put it beside your bed and it turns on in the middle of the night when you’re sleeping, and you’re supposed to be learning from this. A good idea. Unfortunately it doesn’t work.

But hypnopaedia did open the doors to research in other areas and we’ve had incredible discoveries about learning that began with that first question. I went on from there to become passionate about psychology and I have been involved in psychology in many different ways for the rest of my life up until this point.