Let’s talk about one of the more subtle ways to build rapport and maintain it. Sometimes if you dive right into a story with someone, they are not in a state of mind to listen. They may not be interested in the subject, or they may not have the time to listen, or they just have too much else to think about at the moment.
There’s a technique to build rapport that lets you test whether your language exchange partner is interested and ready, willing and able to listen to what you have to say. I picked this up from a conversational hypnosis course by a guy named Igor Ledochowski.
He calls it using rapport hooks. The way it works is that you give someone a small chunk of information with pieces missing. The missing pieces arouse curiosity and get the other person to ask you questions.
Let’s say I was telling you a story and I say something like:
“It’s a good thing I had an extra pair of shoes in the car when I left for work this morning. To get me out of the car they had to destroy the pair I was wearing. When I got out of the hospital after six hours, they let me borrow some clothes, but there weren’t any extra shoes available.”
You can see from the paragraph above that I have offered you some information. But there are holes in the story which make you want to ask questions to find out more about what happened.
If you ask those questions that have been raised in your mind, I know that you are interested and are in a frame of mind to actually receive the additional info that I can give you.
An important part of the technique is that you stop speaking after you have given the initial bit of information.
One huge benefit of using rapport hooks is that you avoid wasting time talking at someone who isn’t even interested.
It’s also fun to craft pieces of information in a foreign language that have strong enough hooks to get another person to become curious.
This is just one more way that you can build rapport with a language exchange partner and have fun playing with the language at the same time. As you can see, you don’t have to have a great degree of skill in a foreign language to use this technique to build rapport, learn a language and have fun doing it.
Take this technique out for a test run and leave a comment below with your results.
A good language exchange partner can be hard to find.
The problem a lot people have is that they don’t know what to talk about. Each person waits for the other to say something interesting. When nothing happens, each thinks the other is somewhat dull. Unconsciously, they project onto each other lowered expectations. The conversation becomes even more lifeless.
Eventually the pressure of discomfort builds until someone beats a hasty retreat.
But there’s an easy way to turn a mediocre language exchange into a fascinating experience for you and your partner. In a 1992 report entitled Pygmalion in the classroom, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson discussed a fascinating study.
The experiment basically showed that the students’ performance was influenced by the teacher’s expectations of them.
The finding of two other researchers pointed in the same direction. Feldman and Prohaska took one group of students and told them that the teacher was “quite effective.” Another group was led to believe that their teacher was “incompetent.”
The results indicated that the better the impression a student had of his teacher, the more she paid attention and the better she performed overall.
This effect where people respond better when they feel that more is expected of them is known as the Pygmalion Effect.
What does this mean for your language exchange?
It means that if you want your language partner to be more interesting, imagine him to be very intelligent, interesting and engaging. If you convince yourself of his abilities to the point of feeling drawn to him emotionally in some positive way, he’ll feel it.
It may take a while for the effects to show, but if you do it with enough genuine conviction and enthusiasm, your partner will begin to respond very positively to your treatment of him.
Try this the next time you meet with your language exchange partner. If you can’t wait that long, go find someone to talk to right now. Anybody. As you talk or listen to her speak, find as many things that you really like about that person and get excited about it. It’s ok to invent positive traits if you don’t know the person well or nothing really strikes you.
Then come back to your computer and leave a comment about your experiences below.
Image Streaming is a great way to learn to speak English (or any other foreign language) faster.
The way image streaming works is this: Close your eyes and imagine a vivid scene in your mind. Now narrate the action in the scene out loud. Be sure to use rich sensory detail. Describe the sights, sounds, tastes, smells and tactile (feel) stimuli of the experience.
Instead of saying, I’m at the beach, detail how the warm sand feels between your toes, the warm breeze against your skin. Describe the taste of the mist that blows in from the sea, the sounds of sea gulls and people laughing or singing as they pass by.
Try to move the story along as quickly as possible without losing the richness of the detail. You should feel like you are balancing on a narrow board or rope that is stretched across two buildings. You need to move quickly as not to lose your balance. This will allow you to relate the action of the scene directly from your senses with as little interference from the critical factor of your mind.
As much as possible, the scene that unfolds in your mind should come together spontaneously. Let your subconscious create the images. Try not to be too intellectual.
The more you practice, the easier it becomes. At first you may feel like you are forcing it or faking it, but don’t worry, you’re practicing your language right? Doesn’t that beat the heck out of repetitive grammar or vocabulary exercises?
If you’re having trouble getting started, pick three random items from your imagination or items within sight and tie them together in a story.
Studies have suggested that practicing image streaming can actually increase your IQ. Since the claims vary widely, the degree of increase if any is debatable. Still, the benefits to your language skills are huge.
Image streaming works by connecting the different parts of your brain. New connections between the part of your brain responsible for spontaneous visual imagery and speech centers are created when you direct your description of the images to an external focus point, like a person or recorder while speaking aloud.
Give it a go today. Leave a comment below and let me know how image streaming works for you.
Building rapport is something you don’t hear much about when studying a foreign language. In reality it’s much more important than being able to build grammatically correct sentences or having a huge vocabulary.
Imagine you have a choice between two language partners. One seems to speak both her native language and your language almost flawlessly, but you feel no connection with her. You have to fight to keep every language exchange session from grinding to a halt.
Now picture another person. This partner makes many mistakes in both languages, but is a delight to talk to. You can’t explain why, but you feel energized by just being around her. Ideas bounce back and forth between you like an easy game of ping pong.
Which partner would you prefer?
With which person will you learn a language better?
What is rapport?
Rapport can be described as “a close and harmonious relationship in which two or more people understand each other’s feelings and ideas, and can communicate well.”
We’ve all been around people that we naturally hit it off with. The purpose of this article is to help to you build that kind of rapport with all kinds of people – even when it doesn’t seem that you have much in common.
The Trick to Matching and Mirroring
One technique to build rapport is called matching and mirroring. As the name implies, you basically imitate the other person’s behavior.
It works because we like people who are like us. If someone adopts your gestures, tone of voice and phrases, you naturally tend to like that person. You feel that he understands you at a deeper level since he is like you.
But matching and mirroring can backfire.
If done too obviously, it fails. Instead of feeling that the other person is naturally adopting our behavior out of a desire to be like us, we may feel like we’re being ridiculed.
There’s a trick to using matching and mirroring effectively.
In a study with robots it was confirmed that people respond positively to being mimicked – as long as the person being imitated isn’t consciously aware of it. If he is aware, the effect was greatly reduced.
How can you imitate another person’s behavior without being noticed?
One good way to do it is to clear your mind completely of negative thoughts about that person. See her as someone you admire in every way. Project a sense that no matter what she says or does, she won’t be criticized or attacked in any way.
If you understand that you communicate with people in a lot of subtle ways that are outside of your normal awareness, you’ll be on your way to good report with the person you’re speaking with. If you keep in mind that you can send out the most positive signals by allowing yourself to feel genuinely positive about the other person, the unconscious signals will be positive and most people will respond positively.
Have you noticed this in your daily interactions while studying a foreign language? Leave a comment below.
The perfect language exchange partner is waiting for you online right now. But he may never be your friend and you may never share his interests.
Looking for a friend to help you improve your language skills can be a huge mistake.
Instead, you should look for someone who is more interested in learning and teaching a language. A person who is less interested in learning your deepest secrets will help you focus on improving your conversation skills. Here are a few of the characteristics I look for in a language exchange partner.
You want your language partner to be like a professional. She should be regular, reliable and focused. Limit the length of your sessions. This will create a sense of urgency and expectation. The sessions will go faster and you’ll both stay focused and attentive.
Few successful movies can keep you on the edge of your seat for much more than two hours. That’s pretty much the same for a language exchange session. Keep your sessions to one hour for each language.
A good language exchange candidate will be able to meet regularly at least once a week. If you can’t get together at least once a week, that person isn’t going to be able to help you with your language abilities. Regularity is everything in getting vocabulary and the structure of a language to stick in your mind.
Make sure your language exchange partner has a genuine interested in learning a language. If she does, you won’t need to worry about finding an “interesting” topic. Almost any topic will give you the opportunity to use new words and to experiment with different ways of saying things.
Patience is more than a virtue when it comes to languages. It’s a necessity. Be patient with your language partner and don’t spend time with someone who isn’t patient back.
Don’t criticize. If your comment about the other person’s language skills doesn’t fit into the format, “I liked…..,” don’t say. If your partner can’t follow this rule, find a different partner.
In summary, look for a partner who wants to learn and is interested in learning a language and in helping you learn. Don’t try to find a friend for life, or someone who will hang around with you for a whole day. Find a professional language learner and teacher.
Leave me a comment below and tell me what you look for in a language exchange partner.
by Roger on October 18, 2009
Imagine goofing off all day long, then lying down with your favorite English bilingual dictionary under your pillow, and when you wake up the next morning – SHAZAAM! — you know most, if not all, of the vocabulary in the entire dictionary.
You have to admit, it’s a fun thought, isn’t it? But does it work?
Well, no, not so much. Some people will try to get sneaky and re-define sleep as a very relaxed state [of consciousness] to sell sleep learning products, but serious researchers agree that learning new stuff while sleeping is still only a dream.
It’s clever, though, because just as most serious studies have discredited the idea of sleep learning, the consensus is that learning English or any other language when you’re relaxed does bring significant benefits.
And studying after you have slept well definitely improves your ability to retain new information.
So let’s talk about the difference between sleep and relaxation and then I’ll give you some techniques to help you stay awake, relax and learn anything from Spanish to Sanskrit faster. (Ok, English, French & German, too.)
What is sleep?
A common definition of sleep is “a natural and periodic state of rest during which consciousness of the world is suspended.”
Relaxation, on the other hand, is a state of CONSCIOUSNESS free from stress or anxiety. The important point here is that you are not necessarily cut off from your awareness of the outside world when you’re relaxed. In fact, when you’re relaxed but not asleep, you’re in a heightened state of awareness where communication with the outside world is clearer and more focused. Since the background noise and distraction caused by stress and anxiety aren’t there, your mind is eager for information to process.
This is a good state to be in when you want to learn something new.
Here’s my favorite method to get in that optimum relaxed state. You can use this anywhere, although being in a quiet place will be more effective.
Recall a time in your life, hopefully fairly recent, when you were feeling very calm and at ease. Imagine as vividly as possible the sights, sounds and smells you experienced at that time. How did the air feel against your skin? Was it hot or cold? What were you doing? Who was with you? (If you have medium level language skills, you can try to express these things in your target foreign language.)
If you are just starting your target language, then let the video that you are creating in your mind continue to run in the background while you listen to your language lessons or do your language exercises.
See if you don’t feel much more focused while you learn and find that you remember more than you otherwise would when a dozen worries and uncertainties are floating around in your brain.
Is it working?
If you would like to hear more techniques to improve your language learning speed, leave me a comment below about how this technique worked for you. Also, you can check out my report on learning languages faster called Lightning Languages.
by Roger on June 13, 2009
Vocabulary can be a blast to learn, and if you do it right, learning a foreign language will seem effortless.
The first rule of learning vocabulary the right way is to use your imagination. Studies show over and over again that interactive learning produces the quickest understanding and the longest retention.
Here is how you should go about learning vocabulary fast and to keep it fresh in your head:
1. Visualize
Select a word that you’ve learned and want to remember. Close your eyes and say the word slowly out loud. Listen for any images that come to mind based on the sound of the word. If it is more than one syllable, pronounce each syllable and note what images come to mind. If no clear images appear right away, repeat the word (by syllables), changing the emphasis until you can get an association with an image.
2. Make it Interactive
Have the image that the sound invokes interact with the object that the foreign word represents. For example, the Spanish word for ice, hielo, sounds like yellow, so you can imagine clearly in your mind, yellow ice. Interaction with another object makes the association stick, so imagine yellow ice falling into a clear glass.
3. Context Matters
If you are learning the words for things in a dining room, sit in a dining room if possible. Wherever you are look around you and try to name everything in the room really fast. Think of things that should be in that place and name them. If you are thinking of food, think about which foods you like the most and what goes well with certain types of food. Think of meat and potatoes or salad and salad dressing.
4. Watch videos
Podcasts that offer texts spoken by native speakers and give you a written transcript of the texts are an excellent way to learn vocabulary since you can pick up the sounds as well as get a feel for the spelling of new words.
Movies give you the context and keep you entertained while you unconsciously learn new words.
5. Listen to Audio books
Audio books are excellent for people on the go. They work well while you are driving, cycling or riding in the plane, train or bus.
The techniques explained above work well for me and keep me eager to pick up new words and phrases. Constantly playing with the images and sounds helps keep the expressions fresh and will motivate you to continually search for new material to learn.
Let me know how this works for you. Leave your comments below.
Do you love grammar?
“Yes, but then being water boarded is my favorite water sport. Go figure.”
Grammar can be fun. Here are some guidelines to make it that way.
Never start a language by learning the grammar. When you reach a certain level of comfort with the flow of language itself, you can start to learn and organize the patterns of language that you have been noticing. Only then should you get yourself a good grammar book.
When I was little I knew I could count on my grandma to support me in about anything I wanted to do. Often I would have questions about things I didn’t understand, and my grandma would help me fill in the gaps in my experience and understanding. She was never critical and very patient. If I was going to do something that was bad for me, I could count on my grandma to gently talk me out of it.
Grammar is like your grandma. It is only there to guide you through the sentence.
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Watching movies is a great way to learn a foreign language. Movies let you listen to real conversations by native speakers and hear the way they interact in real life situations.
Most people use a kind of shorthand to speak to people they know, especially when they share a knowledge of a particular subject. This shorthand is difficult to reproduce in language manuals since it would take it too much time setting up the story.
Movies have time to set the scene. Since the setup, as well as the dialog itself, is in the foreign language, you get a very rich feel for the language and culture when you watch a movie.
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Leaning a foreign language has more benefits than you probably think. Here is a good starter list why you should start to learn a foreign language today.
When you learn a foreign language you will:
1. Have an instant conversation starter – Think of how fascinated you are when you find someone who knows a foreign language. Most people find foreign languages and those who speak them interesting and it sparks instant questions, such as, “Did you actually live there?”
2. Make new friends more easily – There is something mysterious and exotic about talking to someone who knows a foreign language, and people seem to open up and let down their guard much more quickly when they find out that you know a foreign tongue.
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