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Ramses Oudt

Follow @rroudt

12 Jan, 11 tweets, 3 min read

Don't learn languages—acquire them.

You'll never become fluent by studying grammar and memorizing vocabulary. You only become fluent in a language if you stop learning and start immersing yourself.

My five language acquisition principles 👇

🧵 Prefer tweets? See the thread.

Do you learn languages, or do you acquire them?

Most people acquire their native language but learn foreign languages. Brainwashed by school, adults ditch the natural approach for artificial materials that never lead to fluency.

Be different if you want to become fluent.

Throw away your apps, books, and courses.

All you need is a lot of exposure to your target language. Immerse yourself and rewire your brain. Let the language become part of you.

Follow these five principles to acquire any language:

• Fun first.
• Input over output.
• Use native content.
• Practice with flashcards.
• Don't study grammar rules.

Apply these principles daily, and you'll become fluent.

Let's dig into each one.

Fun first.

To acquire a language, you need to show up every day. You'll only find the motivation and energy to return to your target language if you enjoy the journey.

Make fun the all-deciding factor when choosing materials.

Input over output.

What doesn't go in can't come out. Focus on getting a lot of input first. Invest your time in reading and listening to your target language—output can wait.

The more input you get, the better your output will be.

Use native content.

Skip the unnatural language from textbooks and other materials aimed at learners. Massive input is only fun when you use real content.

Listen and read like the natives—immerse yourself in the culture.

Practice with flashcards.

What you can't understand won't be fun for long. Build your comprehension by using flashcards.

Only add full sentences, put your target language on the front, and the language will grow in you.

Don't study grammar rules.

Memorizing grammar rules never leads to fluency. Spontaneous output is only possible if the language becomes part of your subconscious. Review grammar once you've started to write in your target language. Your intuition for grammar grows through input.

I wrote this essay / thread as part of #ship30for30, an accountability-driven writing program.

If you want to join the February cohort, you can get $50 off through this link:
enroll.ship30for30.com/ship-30-for-30…

@Bazzaruto

If you want a more nuanced overview of my language acquisition approach, listen to this conversation I had recently with @Bazzaruto:
curiouslionlearning.com/podcasts/ramse…

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Ramses Oudt

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14 Jan

Strive to become 1% better every day.

Small habits snowball into big changes. If you keep showing up and adjusting based on what you learn, success is a matter of time.

An atomic essay is about how I dropped 45 kg by steadily improving 1%.

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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” —Will Durant

Small habits cause big changes. If you improve by 1% every day, you’re 37 times better after a year. Simple improvements function like compound interest—it snowballs.

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Writing helps you to learn.

Reading @david_perell's Monday Musings newsletter this week, three quotes on writing stood out to me.

🧵 A short thread on writing to learn.

"Writing is humbling because you realize that you don’t understand things you thought you were an expert on."

Writing is the ultimate bullshit filter.

Until you try to explain something, you don't know if you grok it.

"Writing things down is a portal to the highest levels of thinking, which is why mathematicians have the whiteboard and writers have the page."

Clear writing is a mark of clear thinking.

If your writing is muddy, that means you have more learning and writing to do.

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Ramses Oudt

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13 Jan

When you teach, you learn twice as fast.

Stop hoarding knowledge; share it freely if you want to help yourself grow. Teach to learn.

In today's #Ship30For30 essay, I show why teaching is a valuable learning tool.

🧵 Prefer tweets? See the thread.

When learning on your own, it's easy to fool yourself into thinking you understand.

If you can't apply new knowledge immediately, teach others—you'll remember it better, and discover if you truly grok it.

Good teaching stands or falls with preparation.

Know:
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2. When the idea does and doesn't apply.

3. Stories and examples of the idea in action.

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Ramses Oudt

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Learners are the future of knowledge work.

In our complex world, knowing is no longer enough. The skillset we need to solve new challenges is that of knowing how to learn.

A thread on the new kind of knowledge worker:
The learning worker.

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The knowledge worker is dead. Long live the learning worker!

In our increasingly complex world, we can no longer rely on existing systems and knowledge. We see new problems for the first time, and the only way to cope is by learning and adapting.

We need a new type of knowledge worker—one who always learns and shares information.

We need people who believe
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We need learning workers.

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Ramses Oudt

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10 Jan

Real learning is messy.

School feeds us the illusion we can learn isolated topics and string them together later. But, the world is chaotic, so we need to adapt our learning approach to it.

An atomic essay on embracing messiness in learning.

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Life is messy.

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While we're now spoon-fed knowledge, our ancestors couldn't predict what they needed to learn—
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Ramses Oudt

@rroudt

9 Jan

You can teach yourself.

If you're reading this, you have the ultimate teaching and learning tool; writing.

By explaining things to yourself, you uncover holes in understanding—enabling you to learn deliberately.

🧵Atomic essay on learning through writing.

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Richard Feynman—the physicist—famously had a quote in the corner of his blackboard; "What I cannot create, I do not understand," followed by "Know how to solve every problem that has been solved."

Feynman took pen to paper and worked from memory, explaining concepts to himself in simple terms. If he couldn't, that was his cue to dig deeper.

By seeing simple explanations in his own words, he could make ideas his own and wrap his head around complex topics.

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