Fluent English Speakers "Triangulate" While Struggling Students Translate

Hi there. I am Drew Badger, the English Fluency Guide. And in this video I just wanted to

really do something very quickly to explain one important point about learning, and that

is, the difference between translation and triangulation. Translation and triangulation.

Something very important to remember, in a recent video I talked about beliefs. If you

have not seen that video, just look up my video about religion and how that affects

your fluency. Should be a recent video around this one. But today, I'm going to talk just

very quickly about learning through translation versus learning through triangulation. In

that video I'd mentioned it just a little bit, I didn't talk very much about it. So

I wanted to make a video specifically about it in this video. So, let's check it out.

So very quickly, most students, we're just going to contrast here a student versus a

native speaker. So, we'll put the student up here, and the native. And what a student

is doing is they're using their native language usually to translate something into English.

So if I'm going to use a student, so as an example, we're going to make this a Japanese

student because I know that as an example. We've got, ah, here and I'm going to just

put an a there just to use this as a translation. So this is the [inaudible 00:01:16] for ah,

and the English letter a or sometimes ah, as the translation of that. Now what a native

speaker is doing, this is really interesting, and instead of doing a translation of something,

what they're really doing is they are triangulating to learn. To triangulate.

Now this is not a phrase that you will ever hear for language learning, but you'll hear

it for the military or where people are talking about trying to focus on or find a particular

area. If you look at the human body, or just the human face specifically, the reason we

have two ears is because if you only had one, you can't really tell where a sound is coming

from. And it's the same thing with your eyes. So if you only have one eye ... Try it right

now, just close one of your eyes and look around your room and try to see. You can't

tell the depth of something. So you can see the height and the width of something, but

you can't see the depth of it as well. So if I'm going to draw a box or something like

that, that's the height. This is the height, the width and the depth. So you're looking

at the distance of something. So we, if we only had one eye and you're trying

to look at something, you can't really tell where it is. Obviously it's even worse if

you can't see at all. But the reason, again we have two eyes is because, let's say we're

looking at something down here. If I only have one eye I can tell where it is, but I

can't see how far away it is. This is why we need the second eye to triangulate the

position of this thing. So we have a triangle here. Isn't this crazy for a language learning

lesson? Where is the nouns and the verbs and all that? Anyway, so this is to triangulate

something and it works the same way with your ears. This is why we have two ears. So if

we only have one ear, we can't really tell exactly where the sound is coming from. The

sound is kind of over here generally, but if we have the other ear as well, again, the

same idea of triangulating. I'll just write this word for you. Tri ... so

tri meaning three like triangulate. A-N-G-U-L-A-T-E. Does that fit on there? I believe so. So we're

triangulating something. So if you understand this idea about having your face and your

eyes and your ears like that, you have to think about language learning in the same

way. Because we're kind of learning, instead of having just one node like here, this is

a node and this is a node. A native speaker is actually learning from many different positions

or learning something from many different places. And I talked in that video about beliefs,

about it takes a village to raise a child. And this idea means that you're really getting

a support or information or confirmation from many different people. So you can think about

this like a triangle. Each one of these things is its own kind of triangle that you're getting

something. So if I hear the word apple from one person

one time, I don't really understand that word. And this is an interesting thing when you're

trying to teach someone for the first time, it doesn't really matter what the word is.

The brain can't really do much with one thing, even if it's very simple. And what you really

need is like another example or something else. If I draw a picture of an apple, it's

not a very good picture. But if I have a picture of an apple right here, you don't really know

what I'm talking about if I say apple and you don't know the English word for that.

You can probably guess I mean that, but I could mean fruit. I could mean the color of

something. I could be talking about the shape of it. It could be many different things for

your brain. Your brain doesn't have any idea about that. So your brain begins looking for

way to triangulate that information by hearing someone else use that information or to describe

it in some other way. So if I'm out with someone and I see another

apple or something like that, like ah, now my brain is beginning to make a connection.

And it's this connection here where I'm triangulating information that actually develops my fluency.

So instead of using one thing, again, a single connection is always the weakest one and it's

especially bad if you're using a translation. But, got my other marker over here just in

case. But this idea of triangulating is what you're really using to get fluent. And so

you should be learning with more sources and more people rather than just identifying with

one teacher, even if you're only learning with me as the English Fluency Guide. Look

for lots of different ways to learn lots of different ideas, and that way you can confirm

what you're learning in the same way that your ears and your eyes are learning information

by working together. So another example of this, not just vocabulary,

is also listening and pronunciation. As an example, using the word apple again. So I

hear apple from my mother and she has a particular pronunciation. Now, if I only listen to my

mother, I'm going to sound like my mother. And this is why little kids sound like their

parents and their accent could maybe change or evolve as they become older and they start

moving in different places or spending more time with different people. What's really

happening is they're getting more sources of that and they develop their unique identity

and their unique way of speaking. And also their ability to understand many more different

kinds of people because they're triangulating with different examples of that.

So I hear my mother say the word apple. I hear my father say the word apple, my sister,

my brother, another person from the gas station or whatever. Each one of them say apple in

a little bit different way. It's like, apple, apple, apple, maybe there's a slight difference

in that. And I'm listening to all those and I'm synthesizing them. I'm putting them all

together. I'm triangulating the way it sounds for me so I can use the word apple and I come

up with my own kind of pronunciation of the word that's unique. It's very similar to other

people, but it's really a combination of all these different ways of speaking. But, more

importantly, I'm able to understand the word apple from all these different people. It's

the triangulation of this that makes sense, and that's how you develop your fluency really

quickly. So by using more sources rather than one and you're not translating anything.

The difficulty here is when you only have one thing, again, showing you with the apple

example, you don't really know what I'm talking about. You can guess, but you don't really

know and your brain wants to know. Until your brain knows for sure, then you're still a

little bit worried. You don't know if you're using grammar or vocabulary correctly or not.

It's just a problem that you have, not because of you, but it's your brain being uncertain

about something. Does that make sense? So that's why if I just say blah, you don't know

what I'm talking about. You can guess I mean the fruit, but you don't know for sure. So

as soon as your brain is certain about something, and that usually takes at least two examples

or two kinds of things to say, "Ah, okay, I have a good idea about this." But the more

examples you get ... I don't know much about artificial intelligence, but I imagine this

is the way you would train artificial intelligence. So if you're, if you're showing an artificial

intelligence, like here's a picture of this, and the artificial intelligence says, "Okay,

this is an apple." Now you have to show it many more pictures of the same thing in order

for it to understand how that works. But this is how your brain works for learning things.

Does that make sense? All right, I don't want to make a video that's too long about this,

but the important point here is that you should be learning with many different examples.

This is why, like I teach in Frederick, so if you're learning that by yourself using

the app to teach yourself, you get many different examples, many different ways of reviewing

something. Or even in a program like the Fluency Course or Fluent for Life, you're learning

the same vocabulary often from different native speakers. So you're giving yourself the opportunity

to hear how different people would say the same thing and then that helps you to learn

like a native. Hopefully that makes sense. Again, I don't

want to talk too long about this, but this is really important for when you're learning

by yourself. You need to expand the number of people that you're learning with. And you

want to go deeper into certain things that you're interested in, that way you're getting

more information from more things and you're letting your brain triangulate that information.

Hopefully that makes sense. If you enjoyed this video and it made you

think a little bit differently about learning, fantastic. Click that like button and tell

other people about this video too because it's really a very important idea and it's

something that's also very easy to demonstrate by covering up one eye or covering up one

ear like that. Even try that right now. It's really funny how you lose your ability to

see things or to hear things correctly, even by just losing one. So you can still see things,

but you can't tell really where they are. Anyway, hope you have enjoyed it. Click that

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