He visited four countries in one year and learned four languages!
Scott Young also spent a year visiting four countries, learning four foreign languages, and learning portrait drawing in 30 days.
After completing the experiment of rapidly learning the MIT curriculum, he began another challenge: to spend a year without speaking English, travel to four countries, and learn four languages—studying Spanish in Spain, Portuguese in Brazil, Chinese in China, and Korean in South Korea.
When he first started learning Chinese, Scott kept practicing constantly, even though he knew he was making mistakes. “Keep speaking, and quantitative change will lead to qualitative change. There are no shortcuts for anyone when it comes to learning a language.”
For Scott, the primary goal of learning a language is to communicate with people. In China, his learning method involved using Skype to practice with his Chinese teacher at home, then going out to different places to chat with locals—even though many people laughed at his accent when speaking Chinese. After enduring the initial painful stage of frequent stumbling while speaking Chinese, he began to marvel at the beauty of Chinese characters and culture.
In Learn More, Study Less, Scott admits that he is “fascinated by the various relationships between Chinese characters.” He found that learning Pinyin was only the first step of a long journey and could not fully capture the profound depth behind the characters. Scott strongly disagrees with the Western stereotype of Chinese culture as “conservative.” “Westerners say this because they haven’t effectively used Chinese to communicate with Chinese people, nor have they understood or integrated into the unique ways Chinese people make friends and live their lives.”
Scott spent only three months learning each language. After his travels to four countries, he summarized a set of language learning methods:
Find someone who has mastered the language you want to learn.
Agree with this person not to use your native language.
Communicate with this person constantly.
Where there is life, there are challenges. After learning the four languages, Scott dedicated five hours a day, five days a week, to mastering self-portrait drawing. One month later, he successfully grasped the essence of self-portraiture, totaling 100 hours.
Continuously experimenting on himself
Whether challenging himself to complete MIT’s computer science curriculum in 12 months, learning four foreign languages in a year, or mastering portrait drawing in 30 days, Scott has always been doing one thing: setting goals for himself, using himself as the subject of experiments, persisting until completion, and then sharing his experiences and insights with others.
“After determining a goal to achieve through learning, continuously break this goal down into numerous smaller targets. Throughout the process of completing each small goal, constantly summarize and gain effective immediate feedback, forming a cycle of ‘learn-feedback-improve.’ If you encounter difficulties with one small goal, move on to learning another, then turn back and find ways to overcome the previous challenges until the goal is achieved.”
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