Hey Bob,

Yesterday I told you about André, who spent forty-five years believing he was no good at languages because of something that happened to him at school.

And I said the verdict was about the method, not about him.

Today I want to make good on that. So let’s go back into the room.

Picture the classroom. You are thirteen.

On the board there is a table of verb endings. You are copying it into an exercise book.

In twenty minutes there will be a test on it, and the test will be scored, and the score will go in a book.

Then the teacher says your name.

“Stand up. Read the next paragraph.”

Thirty people turn round.

You read aloud, in a language you cannot speak, in front of an audience of your peers, at an age when being laughed at is the single worst thing that can happen to a human being.

Your heart is pounding. Your mouth is dry. You mangle a word. Somebody snorts.

You sit back down and you do not put your hand up again for the rest of the year.

.

.

Now.

What was actually being measured in that room?

Let’s be precise about it, because this matters.

You were being measured on your ability to memorise arbitrary information under time pressure.

You were being measured on your willingness to perform, out loud, badly, in front of an audience of thirteen-year-olds.

You were being measured on your tolerance for being corrected in public.

You were being measured on how well you could reproduce a system of rules that had been explained to you in the abstract, before you had ever once heard the language used to say anything you cared about.

Notice what is missing from that list.

Nobody ever measured whether you could understand French. (Or Spanish or German, or whatever language it was).

• Nobody put on a recording of two French people having an argument and asked you what it was about.
• Nobody gave you a story and asked you what happened in it.
• Nobody, not once, in five years, sat you down with something in that language that was actually worth understanding, and let you understand it.

Because that was not the subject.

The subject was French. Capital F. A thing with a syllabus and a mark scheme, sitting on the timetable between Geography and Games.

It was never a language. It was a test.

And what it tested was memory, nerve and obedience.

.

.

So here is the honest version of your school report.

Not: “has no aptitude for languages.”

But: “at thirteen, was not brilliant at memorising verb tables, and did not enjoy being humiliated in front of his friends.”

Well. Quite.

Neither was I. Neither is anybody.

I have taught languages for the best part of twenty years now, and I have met a great many adults who describe themselves, sadly and matter-of-factly, as bad at languages.

I have never once met an adult who was bad at languages.

I have met a lot of adults who were badly taught.

.

So, here is what I want you to sit with today.

Every single thing that made you fail in that room is optional.

• The memorising is optional.
• The performing is optional.
• The public correction is optional.
• The rules-first, meaning-later ordering, which is precisely backwards from how any human being has ever acquired a language, is optional.

Take all of that away, and give a person something they genuinely want to understand…

…and something rather different starts to happen.

That is tomorrow’s email. It is the interesting one, because it is the one with the evidence in it.

And then, on Thursday at 5pm UK time, I am opening something up. Once a year, this happens.

If you want to make this the summer you finally learn that language you've always dreamed of... you won't want to miss it.

Speak tomorrow.

Olly

P.S. If you are reading this thinking “yes, but I really was terrible, I have the report to prove it”…

…you are describing a document written about a child, by a stranger, on the basis of a broken test.

You would not accept that evidence about anything else in your life.

Don’t accept it about this.

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