Alright. So we just did a video about islands. If you didn't watch that, go and find that video on islands, macro islands, micro islands in language learning, specifically in English and why they're important, but in this video I want to talk about drills and why drills are important. And there's another story related to Jiu Jitsu in here.
When I was learning jujitsu there tended to be two kinds of groups of people. There were those who like to drill a lot, and when I say drill that means to practice a certain position or certain move or a certain submission again and again and again, right? To drill it, to do it many, many, many, times. So, you can obviously do this in any sport, you can do this in any game, you can do this in any hobby that that requires you to carry out a certain movement. Yeah, I guess, it sort of just comes back to movements, right? In language it's in the mouth, in Jiu Jitsu it's with the body, in sport with the body.
So, there were those two groups. So, were those who like to drill a lot and then there were those who said 'drilling is stupid, what you should do instead is just free flow, you should practice more broadly those sorts of things, but without going down to the mat micro scale', ok? So, I remember there was one guy in Melbourne called Kit Dale, he was a black belt, a very talented black belt in Jiu Jitsu, in fact, I think he got it in like half the time it takes most people to get it in. He took him might four years, and he was always against drilling.
He hated drilling. He was always like 'you don't drill specific moves, instead, you roll and you start from specific positions and, you know, quite often you end up going in different directions and doing different things, but you don't just go over the same little technique again and again and again outside of just learning it in the first place'.
So, it was interesting there was always these two kinds of attitudes in Jiu Jitsu and they kind of suited different people. However, I think in languages it could be the same, where different people prefer different styles, but I really find drilling powerful. So, in terms of doing it with language, drilling would be practicing your grammar by conjugated through different verbs or it would be practicing certain sentence structures. We went over the sentence 'ce qui m'a le plus interessé de quelque chose...' in French, which means 'that which interests me the most about this thing', about something, when I learnt that by rote I just practice that sentence again and again and again to the point that it would just come out of my mouth and I didn't have to think about it.
'Ce qui m'a le plus interessé de ça...' 'what interests me the most about that'. So, I think that's really powerful in terms of language learning. So, there is, I think, both have a position, right? We were talking in the island video about macro islands and micro islands. I think you need to start in terms of developing your islands by working out the subjects you want to talk about, and by getting used to talking about those, I guess, in terms of just bringing the subject up in conversation and seeing how you go talking about it, starting from different places, using different sentences, but at the micro level I think it's still very important to practice drill those important sentences to really get them nailed down in your head those structures, right?
There's multiple levels of kind of understanding and you want to get those sentences all the way down to the subconscious level, where you don't have to think about it, right? This is the problem, a lot of my students say 'I always have to think when I want to say something' and that just says to me you haven't drilled it enough or you haven't learnt it strongly enough that it's at a subconscious level that you don't have to think, right? You want to get to the point where you don't have to think, it just comes out and, you know, it'll help you build confidence, you won't feel as anxious when speaking in that language.
So, ultimately what I want to say in this video about drilling, I think, it's incredibly important. If I were you what I would do, once I've gone and watched that island video and started developing the islands and fleshing them out and then coming up with the sentences the micro islands within the macro islands, I would then start drilling the micro islands, in terms of doing those individual small drills, learning those small sentences and substituting in different words, right?
So, for instance, with that sentence 'ce qui m'a le plus interessé de...', 'that which interests me the most about', what you could do is sit there and say the phrase to get used to saying it. And then after that you can get used to adding in different topics and then practicing going off in different directions about different topics, right? What I find the most interesting about surfing is the fact that you get to spend all day in the water, in nature. What I find the most interesting about travelling around Australia is that you get to meet a lot of different people. What I find the most the most interesting about exercise is the fact that blah is the fact that blah, you know?
So, you get to practice these structures, but then you're also drilling on a broader scale talking about broader topics, larger topics, right? And there you're practicing improvisation and getting used to thinking on your feet and then slowly bringing these islands together, right? You're going to start being able to see, actually it's going to become so sort of deep in your subconscious, you won't have to see anything, you'll just start piecing these things together.
That which interests me the most about this thing is the fact that this thing and so you keep pairing them together, right? They're kind of like chains. So, yeah, I guess, that's my thought on drilling and how I would do it. I would develop my islands, I would come up with phrases that I find myself wanting to say as, you know, incredibly often in English or whatever foreign language you're learning. I would drill those sentences and then, above that, I would whether with a conversation partner or on your own somewhere, start practicing talking about those those topics more broadly, but using as many of those sentences as you can.
Learning to link them together, learning to substitute in different words, different adjectives, different verbs, different nouns, all kinds of different ones, right? And I promise you that the more you do this kind of practice, the more advanced you're going to get rapidly and you're going to find conversations become much easier.
Once you have these islands that you can go to and from and you've drilled them so many times, you don't have to think about it consciously, ok? So, that's why that part of it is so important. You need to work on this stuff so much that it's just... You don't even have to think about it, it just comes out, right now speaking English, I'm not thinking at all about the words that I want to put into sentences. I'm just stringing together sentences that I've practiced thousands of times when I've grown up speaking English and then sometimes, you know, I have to pull in words and I have to think, but most of the time they just come together really quickly.
That's what I think you should do. I would love to know your opinion. Let me know in a comment below and yeah, that's probably enough for today.
Cheers guys. I'll see you soon.