we have an output filter success phobia that keeps us from using our competence because we don't feel comfortable we're not a member of that group what's up guys welcome back to the channel so i want to share a really cool concept that i learned recently that can hopefully get you guys to improve your verbal fluency your pronunciation so that you sound more like a native speaker whether you're learning mandarin chinese or any other language this concept comes from a recent interview that i watched with stephen krashen this name might sound familiar because i have mentioned
him in the channel before because he is the one that developed and researched this idea that input is very very important for language acquisition the thing that piqued my interest was there was one part of the interview where he spoke about how to sound more like a native speaker he gives the example of this experience he had with a french student when he was in secondary school he took french and he hated it he and his friends all despised french culture french language they hated the teachers the final exam was oral can you imagine that
for a teenager self-conscious and he decided to humiliate the instructors make fun of them and show them up for the fools that they were and he came in to do his conversation in french and totally exaggerated everything french he had a beret you know that kind of stuff he says and the instructor said he finally got it it's amazing where have you been a plus okay and to stephen krashen this was a very powerful suggestion that all of us have the ability to speak better or to speak more like a native speaker to speak even
like a native speaker and it comes down to playing a certain role to almost acting in a certain way in normal circumstances in daily life this student this french student probably wouldn't have been able to play out this performance to speak so proficiently you know act so well in french but during this examination because he wanted to really exaggerate the accent this kind of gets metaphysical in a way because you know if you really think about it a lot of what we do in real life is also playing a role you know we play a
role in society we speak with a certain accent you know a lot of times when we move to a different country our accent changes to match the accent of the country for example you know if i move to australia or if i move to the uk my accent will probably shift a little bit stephen krashen also brings up another very classical story i don't know if you guys have ever experienced this i did some research in canada in the 80s and i went back up there at the university of ottawa and i met with the
french team and we met in a deserted classroom and there are about five people there all five french speakers all of whom i was very good friends with when i was there before i led the meeting at the chalkboard and i let it in french no problem they were my friends i was comfortable with them and i thought i was probably doing okay i wasn't even thinking about it the door opened and a stranger walked in i thought oh gosh i'm probably making every mistake in the world my french collapsed on the spot my accent
got worse i started making mistakes etc stephen krashen puts it as we have a output filter we have an output filter we have a social phobia we don't feel comfortable in a group when we don't have club membership we don't feel comfortable we don't feel competent to speak as well as we can this is very similar to the idea of playing a role it's essentially in and out groups it's whether you belong into a club whether you have membership into a club and his point is that native speakers belong to a club of native speakers
they have membership into this native speaker club and a lot of times learners of a language people who are not native speakers are trying to get into that club and when you're not in that club it's very easy to feel self-conscious to feel like you know you're not speaking well enough even though your ability may be very very high if not as high as a native speaker but because you don't have that club membership a lot of times you may get self-conscious you know a lot of times when i speak english like for example filming
this video i'm making a lot of mistakes i'm making a lot of grammar mistakes i'm stuttering you know i'm having to film this over and over again this name this name might sound familiar because because i have mentioned them let's try that again but never once am i thinking you know my english sucks i need to improve my english you know i need to go to a cram school because in my mind i'm already native you know i grew up speaking the language so i never questioned that and so i think when we're learning a
language it's not really so much how many mistakes we're making because we're gonna make mistakes whatever we do you know in whatever language even in our native tongue we're gonna be making lots of mistakes i think what's important is thinking about how we can get into that club and really it is a jedi mind trick of sorts because you really have to believe that once you get to a certain level you're part of that club and eventually that will sink in and you'll start to speak more naturally more fluidly with more confidence he gives the
example of clothing clothing has two functions one is to protect yourself against the weather the others to mark you as a member of a group being slightly underdressed slightly over dressed can be embarrassing you go to a party and you're the only one there with a tie so you go take it off get a little more informal etc or your underdress not much you can do about it okay and it's slightly embarrassing mostly people dress exactly what their roles are as a professor i try to dress like a professor i wore the black shirt because
i don't have to worry about it no tie if i have a black shirt and a jacket shoes very subtle point soft walking shoes if i had soft walking shoes with a little red stripe on the back it wouldn't fit i would be underdressed so we know these rules very well and we're very good at conforming to the rules same thing with language language helps us communicate it's also a marker of group membership when we learn languages we play a very big role as the students and we give other people the role as teachers and
this is a very very important concept because roles are good it helps us like i said in a previous video making it seem like you're a student can often give you a lot of benefits because people want to teach you but being in a role of a student also has its cons everything has pros and cons the potential con of a student role is that you may believe it so much that it may hinder your success or your progress and i've noticed this with some of my language exchanges or some of my teachers where sometimes
if i learn something new outside of class or outside of my language exchange and i'll be sort of hesitant to use it because i'm afraid of showing off or afraid of stepping out of that role as a student you know i should be learning from them i should speak slowly i should stutter a bit i shouldn't speak as perfectly as possible because you know i'm just a student i'm supposed to be making mistakes and these are the instances where i'm thinking in my mind you know it's it's i'm putting myself into a framework and putting
myself into a bubble putting myself into this student label that is in some ways hindering my progress so what does this all mean you know how are we supposed to use this information to help us improve our accent or improve our speaking improve our pronunciation so we sound more like native speakers i think what i take from this is that ultimately what it really comes down to is feeling comfortable feeling comfortable in an environment in a learning environment and people that you speak with that you can continue to grow that you can continue to break
molds you can continue to abandon or to leave behind past mistakes and to gain new skills and so for example when i speak with tom who's a really good friend of mine and also another language learner i find that i'm able to try new words with him or to try new idioms because i feel very comfortable with him i'm not afraid that you know he's going to be judging me and we're both very supportive of each other when we're choosing language changes and when we're choosing teachers i think it's important to keep this in mind
but i also think it's important to keep in mind that you know at some point you have to break past that mold of a student and so sometimes that means finding a new teacher finding a new language exchange and somehow believing that we are students we are lifelong students we are continually learning but at the same time we're also players in the game we're also able to interact with native speakers with confidence and of course this is going to take a long time because when you first start out learning a language you're not going to
have a lot of confidence and this is going to build slowly as you learn more and more you wouldn't wear the same clothes as you did in secondary school or in daycare or in high school right so why would you use the same tactics or play the same roles as you did when you are a beginner learning a language your roles continually change as you continue to improve and it's important to own up to it to embody it and to be proud of the new role so i challenge you to continue to role play continue
to challenge yourself to continue to find new roles find new environments that are conducive to learning that are not judgmental and i think this is a great way to continue to improve and to sound more like a native speaker if you like this video check out this playlist i made of a bunch of other language learning tips chinese learning tips see you guys next time [Music]
