The Superlinguists: How to learn a language

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2019

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Simon Calder asks how to go about acquiring a new tongue. He gets tips from those who know - innovative teachers and polyglots. The answers are surprising. At school, it is repetitive drills, shouted out loud by the whole class, that seem to lodge the grammar and pronunciation in the pupils’ brains. But if you are an adult learning by yourself, then, on the contrary, don’t stress about grammar and pronunciation, there are better, and more fun things to focus on.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Jasasz, akutę Tbbc?
0:02.0	Estanę skłuczando, la Bbc.
0:04.0	Leho, legal hej, Bbc lega.
0:06.0	Wieslużajet Bbc.
0:08.0	I go są Bbc imnida.
0:12.0	Yes, as those multilingual messages reveal your listening to the Bbc.
0:17.0	I'm Simon Kolda, welcoming you to the second in our series here on the Bbc World Service
0:23.0	about people who speak many languages, the super linguists.
0:28.0	A lot of us, I believe,
0:30.0	would be thrilled to master just one different tongue
0:34.0	with all the benefits it could bring professionally and personally.
0:38.0	So in this program we confront the problem that deters many prospective linguists
0:44.0	with busy lives and limited resources.
0:47.0	How can you learn a different language, particularly as an adult?
0:53.0	In the last program we heard that some people do appear to have a superpower
0:57.0	for learning languages.
0:59.0	I've been talking to many of these super linguists or polyglots,
1:03.0	including professional linguist Oli Richards.
1:06.0	He speaks eight languages fluently and can get by in many more,
1:10.0	but he didn't get off to a flying start at school
1:14.0	and points to a study in a British newspaper, The Guardian,
1:18.0	which highlighted shortcomings in language teaching.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.