The key to language learning.

There are several things you need to be to learn a language.

You need to be smart enough to understand grammar rules and memorise vocabulary.

You need to have access to resources with which you can learn your target language.

You need enough motivation to learn a language.



That last point is important. I think because it is the one thing under your control. You can motivate yourself, but you can't award yourself resources or intelligence. Motivation is largely a choice, and people choose what they are motivated about.

I know a LOT of people who say things like "I really wish I could learn a language", "I want to learn Italian", etc etc. But, they don't. They say these things but the actions never follow. And it's not because they aren't smart enough, or that they can't find resources.

It's because they don't have motivation.

They only kind of like the idea of learning a language, but they don't want to put in the hours to actually do it. If language learning was easy and instantaneous then everyone would do it. But, because it takes time and effort, it weeds out those people who want to learn a language but don't have the motivation.



Because a lot of people don't have the motivation to learn a language, they will attribute a certain 'talent' to those who succeed where they failed. To alleviate the feeling of failure they feel after dropping their French class because it was 'too hard', they will assume that those people who didn't fail innately have something that they don't have. They must have some sort of 'language learning' gene or special talent.

This, of course, is false. Tim Doner doesn't have anything you or I don't have. What he does have is motivation. Some people are motivated enough to sit down and memorise a German verb table, to do Cantonese flash cards on the bus, and to spend their evenings in Urdu language classes.

You could make a choice right now. Right as you are reading this, to put your head down and study your target language. You could dedicate your time to it, and learn as much as you can each day.

But chances are that you won't. You will watch TV, or play video games, or do something else. I often catch myself doing something completely meaningless on my laptop, and realise that I just wasted an hour that I could have spent doing my Arabic homework.



I will leave you with this. The average American watches 34 hours a week of TV. According to the FSI (whose estimates I think are very high) if you spent that time studying a language, you could learn French in 17 weeks, Hebrew or Icelandic in 32 weeks, and Arabic or Japanese in just over a year.