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Olly Richards discovered the power of learning a language through stories the hard way… a near-death experience! In this episode Elle chats with Olly about his language learning journey, how he developed his story learning method and the awesome and creative videos he is creating for his YouTube channel.

Elle: Hello everyone and welcome to the LingQ podcast with me Elle. Remember, if you are studying English, you can study this podcast episode as a lesson on LingQ, the audio and the transcript. I’ve created it for you and the lesson link is in the description. In fact, on LingQ you can find a full course, so every episode of this podcast is there for you to study as an English lesson.

LingQ is a game changer tool for language learning. You can create a lesson from any content you find online. Perhaps you want to start reading your news in Spanish in the morning, or watching movies in Japanese, you can make a lesson with it on LingQ and start enjoying content in your target language. If you’re enjoying the podcast, please feel free to give us a review on Apple, follow us on Spotify or SoundCloud, subscribe on Google Podcasts. Whatever showing love is on the platform that you’re listing on. It is greatly appreciated. This week’s guest joins me from across the pond in the UK. He is a teacher, language learner, YouTuber and author. Today I am joined by Olly Richards.

Olly, thank you for joining us.

Olly: The pleasure’s all mine. Thanks so much.

Elle: Excellent. And so how are things in the UK right now?

Olly: From what perspective?

Elle: Uh, yours and I guess, you know, why not talk about COVID? Why not? If you want to.

Olly: Well, I mean, I’ll give you the quick version. COVID’s, uh, actually on the way out. I think we’re, most people here are mostly vaccinated for the most part.

Um, I think we did slightly better than, um, than, uh, than other places. Things are Opening up. So like, yeah, it’s the end in sight here after a  pretty abysmal year or so. And then personally, things are great. I’m doing what I do. I’m writing books, I’m making courses, making loads of YouTube videos.

YouTube is kind of my pet project at the moment. So, uh, so yeah, I’m enjoying, enjoying life.

Elle: Excellent. Yeah, and I have to say, I did notice that you’ve been making a lot of YouTube videos lately, it’s great, on your channel: Olly Richards, which I will add a link to of course. So Olly, as I mentioned, you are a language learner and you know, is it eight languages I think I saw online, or has that changed?

Olly: Yeah, I tend to, I tend to say 8. It’s my least favorite question because as time goes on, you know, you forget some languages and other ones go up, but yeah, I I’ve definitely, I’ve definitely learned, uh, 8 languages to a good level. Those would be, uh, after English obviously French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Cantonese, Arabic, and then smatterings of a few others like German and Thai.

But, um, yeah, it’s all kind of, it’s a massive sort of smorgasbord of stuff. Um, all kind of in flux at any one time.

Elle: Right.

Excellent. And, uh, now I have to ask you, uh, I love asking… you are a polyglot, you speak all these languages, so I love asking polyglots who come on, what sparked their passion, what motivated them to start this language learning journey.

And I’ve had all kinds of interesting answers, but I’ve never had near death experience. So tell us about that.

Olly: Yeah.

So the near-death experience, well I’m going to get to that, cause that, that was actually how, that’s what sparked my interest in stories and teaching through stories. It wasn’t how I got interested in languages in the first place.

Like, so I grew up, I grew up like your classic monolingual, English guy and no contact with languages at all. I mean, I did French classes at school, but that’s about it. Um, but when I was 19 years old, I, I was living in London and I got a job in a cafe where I was just, uh, I came across, uh, people, everyone working in that cafe – and it was, it was Caffe Nero in Seven Dials for anyone who  knows London,it’s  still there to this day, I sometimes pop in. Uh, everyone who was working there with me was from it was from different countries. So there were Italians and Swedes and I kind of got talking to these people and I was just like blown away by how interesting their, their backgrounds were.

I was kinda thinking of what do you, what are you doing in the, in London? And then I realized that these people were all, not only speaking their own languages, but they were speaking English and, uh, and often each other’s languages too. So I just found it all very, very interesting, and that kind of just sparked this interest in learning languages.

So I started learning French. And then, uh, shortly after that, my girlfriend decided to break up with me, sent me into a tailspin. I ran away to Paris. So I lived in Paris for six months and kind of learned French there. And then it was just, you know, flood gates were open after that. Um, but the, the near death experience you referred to was a few years later, I was trying to learn Spanish and not doing very well.

And, uh, I was traveling through Argentina when I was in this tiny village, up in the mountains, on the border of Argentina and Bolivia, um, called Iruya. And, um, and it was very, very high up high altitude. And I woke up in the middle of the night, one night, uh, in this hostel and I couldn’t breathe. And I thought, well, maybe, maybe it’s just something to do with the Malbec I’d been drinking that night. So I… but it didn’t get any better. And I still couldn’t, I still couldn’t breathe. So I ran outside of the balcony, like starting to panic thinking, what am I going to do? And it got worse and worse and I literally could not get any oxygen.

And so I was kind of, sort of sitting there on the end of this balcony heaving thinking, this is, you know, this is the end. And then luckily of course the breath did eventually come back after a few minutes. Um, but I was too scared to go back to bed at that point. So all I could do is sort of sit down.

So I’m just sotr of sitting down on this balcony, looking out over the, this, this kind of this huge valley. And, uh, all I had with me was this Spanish book that I bought from some secondhand shop or something a few weeks earlier. And of course never touched, but I was too scared to go back to bed. We didn’t have iPhones back in the day.

So I just picked up this book and started reading and it was kind of, it was really hard work cause my Spanish wasn’t very good, but I kind of kept, plowed through as I must have sat up for two or three hours reading this book. And, um, didn’t think I’d understood all that much, but was was just about following the plot, which is something key that we might come back to later.

Anyway, the next day I woke up happy to be alive. And I was walking down the street in this, in this village, um, and I found all these words popping into my head. I was like, it was these random Spanish words, like… which means the Bishop. Um, and then I thought, well, that’s weird. Cause normally I, you know, I don’t remember learning these words.

And then, you know, normally I have to try really hard to remember words, but these words are somehow stuck. And then I realized it was because I’d sat up for hours last night, reading this book, and I’d certain words had been, had come up in the story over and over again. Um, and so it, that kind of was one of those kinds of Eureka moments.

And then, so I kept on reading the book and then eventually went back to see my friends in Buenos Aires where I’d been staying before. And all of a sudden I realized I was so much better at speaking. I could speak in more complete sentences cause I had all this vocabulary. Now I can understand a lot more of what people were saying.

So it just sparked this big interest in, in stories. And so from there on, I kind of went… this was many years later, but like, I started to try to develop a way of teaching languages using stories, because it was so powerful for me. And, uh, and loads of people like stories after all. So that was, yeah. That’s how, how that happened.

Elle: Wow. My goodness. So did you ever, um, Not to focus on it, just for a second to come back to what happened to you. Did you ever find out what that was?

Olly: I think it was, I think it was just, I think it was just altitude, you know, that’s, that’s what happens when, when you’re, when you’re so high up. I mean, it was right up on top of a mountain in the Andes.

Uh, so I guess that’s what it was. I mean, maybe I was drugged or something. If I was, then they didn’t do a very good job of stealing my stuff.

Elle: No, the plot  thickens though  near-death experience or attempted murder? Um, so previous to that, what kind of methods uh… so that’s when, as you said, there’s the kind of focus on stories began. Previously what kind of methods had you used to study languages?

Olly: What I used was all I knew, which was what I’d done at school. So when I was at school, uh, you know, it was a very traditional learning. It was, um, you know, repeat after me, grammar, conjugation tables, uh, memorizing lists of words. That’s all I knew as far as I was concerned, that was, you know, that’s how they taught us at school.

It must be the best way to learn, right? So, so, um, that’s all I did every time I, I had started a new language. Uh, I would just kind of go down to the European book shop in Soho, um, w where it was at the time in London. And, uh, I would, I just, I just thought, I’d see whatever, whatever textbook I liked the look of and buy it and just work through it and then, you know, make my own paper flashcards and things like that.

Uh, you know, it’s, um, it’s, it’s a very, very traditional way of doing things. And, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve sort of learned since that there’s nothing necessarily wrong with doing it that way. In fact, lots of people do have quite a lot of success, but it’s what comes afterwards that, that matters. You know, I actually think more and more that the method itself is just a way to get started.

The journey from kind of competence to actual fluency is it’s down to something a lot more kind of fundamental, I think. But yeah.

Elle: So was Spanish the first language then that you would say you became, as you say, very competent competent or fluent in?

Olly: No, I’d say it was probably, it was probably French. Um, but I was living in Paris, so it was kind of, it was, I had that advantage.

What changed was that when I, when I left France and I went back to the UK, I kept learning languages. Right.

But I had to figure out how to keep learning languages while not being immersed in the country, which after all is most people’s situation. Right?

Elle: Yeah.

Olly: So really for most language learners, um, you know, it’s not that living in the, in the country is necessarily a panacea because there are plenty of people who go to live abroad and don’t learn the language to any good degree. Uh, but for the, for the ambitious, dedicated learner, living abroad is a huge advantage because you just have access to the language all the time. But for most people, you know, the challenges, how do I learn a language as a busy adult living at home, you know, by myself? Well, maybe with the help of a teacher a little bit, but that that’s the challenge that most people face and that’s, that’s who I also try to, to help with the stuff that, that, that I do.

I’m very focused on the practical side of life.

Elle: So you run the website, I will teach you a language.

Olly: That’s right, soon to become soon as it becomes storylearning.com. Depending on when people are watching this, we’re actually, we’re actually… cause because the method that I now teach using stories, I call story learning, um, and so we’re actually changing the name of everything over to story learning.com. Uh, but that, that may or may not have happened by the time this goes live. So, but anyone watching this well into the future. Will uh, will yeah. Story learning.com sould be where it’s at.

Elle: Storylearning.com. Okay.

Excellent. Yeah.

So we’ll talk about the story learning method in a moment. I just want to mention your short stories series, because two of the past guests I’ve had on this podcast have mentioned them. So I always ask, uh, you know, what would you recommend, uh content-wise and I’ve had two people now say Olly Richards’ short stories, readers, which are available online have, were really helpful for me.

So I believe, for cantonese and for Spanish. Yes. Cause that’s right. They’re offered in Spanish and Cantonese, right?

Olly: No, not, not, not exactly. Not exactly. Not Cantonese, but we do have Spanish and we have, we have about 20 languages at this point of which Spanish is one. Yeah.

Elle: Wow. Okay.

Excellent. I’ll uh, I’ll put the link in the description for those, but so they came before you developed this kind of story learning method, or I guess they were…

Olly: Yeah, and so the way, so the way, the way it happened was that I, um, so I’ve been searching for these ways because I found myself learning through stories. Right.

And, um, the way that I was learning was up, I was just getting, getting books and reading those books and.

And that’s fine once you get to a certain level, but it’s not much comfort for people who are kind of just getting started or who are kind of at a lower level because reading novels is pretty tough and you’ve either got to be already be at a good level, or you’ve got to be extraordinarily persistent, um, uh, in order to kind of make your way through and all.

So what, so my first where I went first was to think, okay, well, I want to write stories that you can, that can be useful for them. Um, and you know, graded readers are hardly a new concept, but, but graded readers have always been traditionally extremely dull and boring and, you know, there are often kind of, you know, it would be a translation of like Sherlock Holmes or Jane Austen or whatever, which is fine, but it’s not my cup of tea.

So I wanted something more, more fresh and modern and fun. Right.

So, so I started writing short stories, um, in originally in Spanish and then after that in many other languages. Uh, and, and, and I kind of really went down this rabbit hole of figuring out here what exactly do learners want in, um, in the books like this? Uh, because I think a lot, it’s probably, it’s probably to look at these books and think, oh, well, he just wrote a few stories, but actually I did a huge amount of research into everything from like how long should the average sentence be?

Uh, what genres of stories should we have? Um, what’s the ideal chapter length? I mean, I I’ve, I went deep on this stuff. Um, yeah. Uh, and so that’s why I think these books have become so popular because it is exactly what people need when they are at a, kind of A2, upper beginner level to start reading. So they came first and then, but that’s still not a method for beginners.

So I started to think like, well, I’ve got these, I’ve written these books and they’re, they’re super popular. I want to do something that, I want to create something so that complete beginners in a language can learn using stories too. So it took me a couple of years to figure it out, but then eventually I, I, I kind of created my story learning method, which is, which is specific specifically for beginners.

So if you want to learn Japanese or Spanish or French or whatever, um, I would start to create these courses whereby um, so that you’d have these courses that were based entirely on stories, but you add onto that tuition and, um, and activities and things like that, that they get you, um, actually kind of processing the language and learning. Um, and so that, yeah, that came after, because it wasn’t obvious to me how to do it. Well, I could have, I could have thrown something, I could have thrown something together at any point, but I really wanted to do it well. Um, I’ve got a long, a long background in teaching. Um, so I kind of, I was quite, you know, insistent on, um, on doing that the right way.

Elle: Excellent. And what’s what did you used to teach before?

Olly: Well, when I was a lot younger, I taught music for a few years. Um, I used to teach piano and guitar cause I have a background in music. Um, I have a degree in, I have a degree in jazz piano, which not many people know.

Elle: That’s very cool.

Olly: And I used to, I used to play professionally. That’s like what I did for the longest time. Um, and then I came to a kind of crossroads in my life and I decided to go and teach English so I moved to Japan, taught English in Japan for a few years. And then did my, you know, certificates, diplomas. I did a master’s degree in applied linguistics, you know, I’ve really kind of… whatever, when I, when I do new things, I tend to kind of go, go at it quite hard.

So I went down the full on teaching routes. I almost went and did a PhD and all that, but I didn’t do that in the end. Um, but yeah, so I’ve got quite extensive experience as a, uh, as a TEFL teacher and teacher trainer and kind of academic ish.

Elle: Wow. And do you, are you by any chance left handed?

Olly: Yeah

Elle: No way. Okay.

So the last podcast episode with, I don’t know if you know Nate of Nate’s adventures, YouTube channel, he mentioned your, uh, your readers. Uh, he said that apparently people who have musical talent or are able to play, uh, instruments multiple or just one, and are left-handed are apparently more likely to, uh, be good language learners, whatever that means.

Or be maybe interested in language learning, but there you go. So you point his point. I’m going to ask every guest moving forward.

Olly: Yeah, I mean, yeah, it’s, it’s, I, I’m not aware of any kind of research that shows that. I mean, the difficulty is that, I mean I’ve got, it’s often people ask me like Ddoes a musical background give you, help you have a better accent? Or does it help you or does it help you with languages? And my, my feeling on that is yes, it has helped me in certain ways. It does with my accent in other languages, I think tends to be, tends to be quite good, better than, I mean, there’s plenty of things in my languages that are not good, but accent is, accent, I I’m, I’m better. Yeah.

And also the thing of, um, I actually get the discipline of training yourself to get good at something that was once hard.

Elle: Right.

Olly: Which is what is what classical music in particular trains you to do. Um, but in general, the thing is that for every example of someone who has a background in music and he’s good at languages, you can find 10 examples of people who are just as good at languages with no musical background.

Elle: Yeah, like Steve I think for example.

Olly: Right. Um, yeah, Steve doesn’t strike me as a musician. He, maybe he is.

Elle: I don’t, I don’t think he plays anything. I could be wrong.

Olly: I could, I can imagine him sort of sitting in some izakaya in Japan seeing someone  kind of do some crooning or some, all Japanese songs or, but yeah. It’s, I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t really know.

Um, I remember speaking to Stephen Krashen about this, about the musical question and, and, and he, and he, he replied quite similarly, like, you know, our, our intuition, like likes… based on intuition we’d like to think that there’s a connection, but it’s not born out in research as far as I’m aware.

Elle: Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Um, so as you mentioned, you have your short stories, your reader short stories in whichever language, are available in 20 languages. I won’t ask to recite those.

Olly: Yeah aproximately.

Elle: That’s, that’s amazing. Um, what about your, so your story learning method, which is more focused on beginners, what languages are those available in?

Olly: Yeah, so this my story learning courses are basically, yeah, they are just your standard beginner courses, just like any kind of beginner textbook or, or, or whatever. Uh, and we have those in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, uh, Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Portuguese and Russian.

Elle: Wow. Okay.

Olly: Yeah.

Elle: Okay, you heard it here first. Um, so I want to talk, as you mentioned about your YouTube channel, you’ve been making a lot more videos on your channel, Olly Richards. Um, how’s that going? And what do you have any kind of projects in the works? How’s the channel going?

Olly: Yeah.

So the channel’s going great. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for asking and anyone who’s listening and watching go subscribe to the channel on YouTube because I’m putting out some very, like I’m trying to, I’m trying to, I’m having a lot of fun with the channel. So for example, recently I published a video on how Mormon missionaries learn languages, which has done super well.

And I also find like videos of celebrities speaking, speaking languages, and, and kind of talk about how, about how they are, how they do it and give some kind of commentary and things and things like that. So everyone go subscribe to, to that. Or you can just search Olly Richards on YouTube and drop me a comment and say hi, cause I love to get those comments.

Um, but most of all, it’s, it’s a way for me to just kind of, I guess it sounds corny, but it’s a way for me to express myself really, because I I’ve always been a content creator. I started my website and this whole business started off as a blog. Back in 2013. I just, you know, I heard, I heard, I read, I heard about this guy, Benny Lewis and how he was blog blogging.

And, um, so I thought, well, I could, I could do that. So I started a blog and then that all developed into, you know, everything that’s happened since has kind of developed from that. But my first passion around this was always, um, blogging. Cause I just, I’ve got a long background in languages, language learning, teaching, and I wanted to create stuff.

Right.

I wanted to blog about my experiences and um, and so… that I did that I did for years and years, but, but one of the trends that’s happened, you know, on, on online in recent years is the video has become so much more, um, important, you know? And, and so I’ve been, yeah. I’ve decided I decided to get, to make a go of my, of my, of my YouTube channel.

So I can, I’ve learned how to do YouTube. I’ve been uploading videos on and off about seven years, but I just never, it was always like a way to make my blog more interesting by making a quick video of me speaking Cantonese or whatever. Um, but I recently, I sort of decided to, you know, quote unquote, “do YouTube” or “learn YouTube”.

So I, um, I, I took it quite seriously. I recruited a team who helps me, uh, with the channel or kind of a production team and, um, have been making or experimenting with all these different videos. And, and I just love to have ideas. I have like a million ideas a minute. I’ve always been that way. And so I, YouTube is kind of a very cool way to just have an idea and be able to put it out there.

So, like, for example, I remember watching the US presidential elections last year. Yeah.

Uh, and thinking to myself well that’s interesting, because I’ve watched these, these debates that they had. And, and it’s complete cliche now that you’ll get, you’ll get someone who’s like speaking to the audience in English and then they’ll turn to the camera and speak in Spanish.

I thought, well, that’s kind of weird. I know why they’re doing it, right? But it’s also quite cool. Wouldn’t it be fun to make a video with like, talking about the Spanish that they use. And, and so I just made this video on, on US presidential, analyzing us presidential candidates. I found some clips of them speaking Spanish.

And then just talked about it. And that for me is just so fun to do. And so I use YouTube as a way to just, just, just kind of get my thoughts and ideas out there. And, um, and fortunately it seems to be really resonating with people.

Elle: So are you actively learning a language right now or are you in  that polygto maintain mode?

Olly: Yeah.

Well, what I’m actually doing right now is I’ve, I’ve gone back to learning Kanji. So Japanese or Chinese characters in Japanese, it’s like been a bit, a bit, a bit, a bit of a love-hate relationship with, for me for four years. But I haven’t, I have to say in the last few years in particular, I haven’t been all that active with language learning, um, as much as before. And I often think about why that is. I’m very influenced by my surroundings, right? So I’ve often traveled a lot and, um, you know, my ideal… well, my ideal scenario for learning a new language is either when I’m, when I’ve got a community of people around me. For example, when I lived in London, I had a bunch of Brazilian friends, learnt Portuguese, or else when I travel or go to the country.

So when I went to Japan, learnt Japanese, um, and, but then kind of right now, I’m in a stage of life where I’m quite like, um, I’m quite chilled really. Um, I live in like in, in, in a little village, in the middle of the countryside in England, I hardly ever hear foreign languages. Uh, so I don’t kind of have this big, or I haven’t had this, this, this real urge to be studying for, for a while, but it, but it kind of comes back in fits and starts. So recently I’ve kind of decided, right, it’s time to properly learn to learn, to, to, to read and write Japanese, like… like I said, that kind of big unfinished project.

And so I’ve got, I’m working on that currently, so I’m, um, I could tell you how I’m going about it, if you like, but given that I haven’t had that much success in the past, I’m not, not sure it’s particularly useful information. Um, but yeah. Um, but I do maintain languages a fair bit. I mean, I always regularly speak Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Cantonese, French from time to time.

Um, um, but yeah, it always kind of changes. I I’m, I’m always very I’m full of admiration for people who are, who dedicated lots of time every day to actively maintaining languages, even, even without a, um, a particular reason do so. Cause I’m, I’m just not like that. I I’m, I’ve always been someone very much kind of led by my surroundings.

Um, so, so yeah, but I suspect when the world starts to open up again properly and, um, and, and, and more traveling is to be done. I suspect I might, I might pick up the bug again quite quick.

Elle: And how about your kind of entertainment time then? Do you find you watch movies, TV shows, read books, blog posts in the different languages, you know, or do you kind of just gravitate towards maybe English or the langauges you know best?

Olly: It’s the same answer, right? I don’t do stuff for the sake of the languages, right? I know this is probably a quite, it’s probably quite an uncommon answer among the, the guests you have here. Cause I know a lot of people are just incredibly dedicated to the way that they kind of structure their time to practice different languages.

See, for me, it’s never, it’s never been in about the language as such. It’s always been about what I can do with that language. So I’m, it’s not that I’m particularly interested in learning Japanese it’s that I want to be able to communicate with my Japanese friends and talk to them in Japanese. It’s not that I necessarily love the act of learning Portuguese, it’s because I love to go and hang out with, with Brazilians in Brazil.

I just love being there. So like, so when I don’t have that immediate environment, it’s not something that I just really seek out. Um, so it’s difficult. I do think about this sometimes. I mean, I, I will watch movies in Japanese and Portuguese and stuff. Well, whatever, um, but, but again, like I say, it’s just not something that I, I try and force.

I think one kinf of relevant question here is what it means to maintain a language. Because I think for me, the languages I’ve learned fall into kind of two categories, the languages I’ve learned and I, and I’m still pretty good at, and then the languages that I’ve learned and I’ve kind of let them fall away.

And I very much believe that once you’ve learned the language to a strong level, which I normally, uh, pinned down at about a B2 level, B2 or higher. You never lose that language. Right?

So for example, my French is probably not great right now. But I still understand everything. And given 15 minutes of practice, I can get it back to a good level, even though I haven’t really spoken to for 20 years when I, when I was last in France, but that’s, but that’s quite common among, among people who, who have got languages to that kind of level are going to B2 or, or, or above level.

And so when I think about the languages that I’ve, that I’ve had at that level or I’ve got to that level still, I, I’m not worried about losing them because I know that the day that I need them, I’ll get it, I can get them back very quickly. So for that reason, I just choose not to spend my time in some arbitrary maintenance mode.

Um, but rather I just, I just do what I want to do in my life. And, you know, if languages are part of that, great. If not, no worries. Um, I know I’ll come back to them later, so yeah, I’m very, I’m very much, um, I’m very kind of Laissez-faire with that, that, that, that kind if thing. It’s not very practical, not very practical, practical help for people, but that’s the truth.

Elle: But that’s like, you know yourself, right? You’re not going to force it because, and also if you do force it, if you’re like, Hey, I’m going to spend X amount of time each day on these different languages and you’re not necessarily enjoying it, you’re just doing it as a chore, is it really that helpful? You know, maybe.

Olly: I think it can be helpful. I mean, if  you’re spending a lot of time, if you’re spending regular time, picking up a language, it will have an effect.

For sure. For me, it’s more a case of, I won’t enjoy it if I’m forcing it. I, you know, I, I, I’m always, I’ve always been very busy. I’ve always worked hard and I have, I have a lot of things I like to do. Um, you know, I spend a lot of time, you know, walking, cycling, for example, seeing family. Uh, so I don’t, I don’t feel like I have time to do something that I don’t really want to do and, you know, maintaining languages that, that maintaining languages where, where there’s no particular outcome there, it kind of fits into that category.

Elle: Right.

I See.

Olly: Sorry.

Elle: No, don’t apologize. Um, so for everyone who’s listening and watching, who’s going to rush to Olly Richards, your YouTube channel, what can they expect from your channel moving forward for the rest of the year and beyond?

Olly: A lot of fun language stuff is what you can expect. You’re not going to find videos of me saying, you know, here, here is my six month uh, Korean progress or anything. It’s, it’s I used to do that, but I don’t do that anymore.

I, what I try to do is I try to think what will people enjoy, what will people find interesting? Um, so I’m working on a video right now, for example, about the defense language Institute. So the green Berets in the US, what methods they use to train their special forces to learn languages faster.

Um, I’m working on, uh, on, on some videos about, um, about different, about different languages, obviously. Bit of a statement of the obvious. I’m working on, I’m working on a video right now about how we create our book. So like when we’ve got these, you’ve got these books in different languages, or how do we create a Brazilian Portuguese book and that, or how do we make a Korean book? Making A video describing all of that. We’ve got, um, you know, videos of like celebrities speaking Japanese and things like that. And I’m having a great time, uh, at their expense. So yeah, a lot of, a lot of stuff where I’m trying to sort of,but this isn’t, this isn’t frivolous. I’m trying, I always try to sort of talk about different language topics, and then tie it back into what you can take away from it.

So if I’m, if I’m making a reaction video to Colin Firth speaking Italian, I’m not sure. Well, he speaks great Italian by the way. Yeah.

And you can, if you want to see an example of that um…

Elle: I do, because that just makes him more attractive. I’ll check that out right after.

Olly: But what I’ll try and do is I’ll kind of I’ll I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll try to like analyze it and then tie it back to what you can take away from that.

Right.

So, so actually I try to make it informative and educational as well as, as well as fun. So yeah go now, go subscribe. Like I say, um, if you’re listening to this and leave me a comment on my video, say that you came from the, from the LingQ podcast and, uh, I will, uh, I’ll look out for those because I love getting, I love, uh, I love getting comments from people.

I love hearing from people that come from different places.

Elle: Excellent. Well, I will of course pop the link in the description to your YouTube channel Olly Richards. Also, I will teach you a language.com. Actually no, it will be storylearning.com moving forward. So I’ll just say story learning. I’ll change the link when it, the website changes in the description and also a link to your excellent readers, which polyglots are raving about on this podcast as well.

So, um, listen, Olly, thank you so, so much, it’s been a great chat. I wish you the best of luck with the story learning method and with your YouTube channel and, um, yeah, thank you so much for joining us today.

Olly: All right. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

Elle: Cheers. Bye-bye.