3个热门TED演讲，让你的学习比现在高效10倍（附视频&演讲稿）

如果我问你，看完一本书，怎样才算有效果？有人可能会说写了满满的笔记，有人会说输出了一篇上千字的文章，但我说吧，最好的效果就是让自己的思维和行动都有所改变，而且，还得是好的改变。

就像成甲老师的《好好学习》，真的好像身体某一个角落由内而外刷新了一遍，把过去的某个想法和未来将要进行的某个行动全都升级了一个level。

比如说，我在这本书get到最大的点就是：在这个信息大爆炸时代，学习什么（what）真的已经不是一个大问题了，因为你想学的任何东西几乎都可以在网上找到，但是，如何学习（how）却是每个人都还不具备的能力。

这应该就是李笑来常说的学习学习再学习，先学会如何学习再去学习。今天推荐3个关于“如何学习”的TED演讲，希望对你有帮助。

1

20小时就能快速学会

任何一项新技能

20小时学会任何一项新技能    

 上下滑动，阅读完整版 

Hi everyone. Two year ago, my life changed forever. My wife Kelsey and I welcomed our daughter Lela into the world. Now, becoming a parent is an amazing experience. Your whole world changes over night. And all of your priorities change immediately. So fast that it makes it really difficult to process sometimes.大家好，两年前，我的生活完全改变了。我和我的太太凯尔希迎来了我们的女儿莱拉。为人父母是一种奇妙的体验。一夜之间，一切都改变了。你所有的计划全部被打乱。速度之快，让人措手不及。Now, you also have to learn a tremendous amount about being a parent like, for example, how to dress your child. (Laughter) This was new to me. This is an actual outfit, I thought this was a good idea. And even Lela knows that it's not a good idea. So there is so much to learn and so much craziness all at once.然后你会有很多东西要学。比如，该如何打扮你的宝宝。对我而言这是新的挑战。这是我搭配的一套，我觉得还挺不错的。但是好像连莱拉都看不上。要学的还很多，千头万绪的。And to add to the craziness, Kelsey and I both work from home, we're entrepreneurs, we run our own businesses. So, Kelsey develops courses online for yoga teachers. I'm an author. And so, I'm working from home, Kelsey's working from home. We have an infant and we're trying to make sure that everything gets done that needs done.更糟的是，凯尔希和我都在家工作，我俩都做生意，有自己的公司。凯尔希为瑜伽教练做在线课程开发。我是一名作家。因此，我俩都在家上班。我们有婴儿要照顾，我们竭尽全力把每件事都做好。And life is really, really busy. And a couple of weeks into this amazing experience, when the sleep deprivation really kicked in, like around week eight, I had this thought, and it was the same thought that parents across the ages, internationally, everybody has had this thought, which is: I am never going to have free time ever again. Somebody said it's true.日子过得非常忙碌。这种奇妙的体验持续几周过后，睡眠不足的弊端开始显现，大概是在第八周的时候，我产生了一种想法，我觉得这种想法无论你是哪国人，无论你多大年龄，只要你当父母了，都会有：我此生再无自由之日了。有人说确实如此。It's not exactly true, but it feels really, really true in that moment. And this was really disconcerting to me, because one of the things that I enjoy more than anything else is learning new things. Getting curious about something and diving in and fiddling around and learning through trial and error. And eventually becoming pretty good at something. And without this free time, I didn't know how I was ever going to do that ever again.这可能有点绝对，但在当时的情境下，我真的是这么想的。这让我很抓狂，因为我最喜欢的事情就是学习新事物。对某件事产生兴趣，然后一头扎进去，不断尝试，不断学习。最后变得比较擅长。但是，如果没有自由支配的时间，我真不知该如何继续我的这个爱好。And so, I'm a big geek, I want to keep learning things, I want to keep growing. And so what I've decided to do was, go to the library, and go to the bookstore, and look at what research says about how we learn and how we learn quickly. And I read a bunch of books, I read a bunch of websites. And tried to answer this question, how long does it take to acquire a new skill? You know what I found? 10,000 hours! Anybody ever heard this? It takes 10,000 hours. If you want to learn something new, if you want to be good at it, it's going to take 10,000 hours to get there. And I read this in book after book, in website after website.没错，我是个死宅，我想持续学习，不断成长。于是我做出一个决定，去图书馆和书店寻找研究资料，看我们该如何学习，如何快速学习。我读了很多书，也浏览了不少网站。想搞清楚一个问题，掌握一项新的技能需要多久？知道我找到的答案是什么吗？1万小时！你们听过这说法吗？要花1万小时。如果你想学点新东西，并且变得很擅长，要用掉你1万小时的时间。我在书本上，网站上不停地读到这一点。And my mental experience of reading all of this stuff was like: No! I don't have time! I don't have 10,000 hours. I am never going to be able to learn anything new. Ever again. But that's not true. So, 10,000 hours, just to give you a rough order of magnitude, 10,000 hours is a full-time job for five years. That's a long time.我的内心是崩溃的，我的心在呐喊：不！我没有这么多时间！我上哪儿找1万小时？我再也学不会新东西了。永远没戏了。但事实不是这样的。1万小时是什么概念，打个比方，1万小时相当于5年的全职工作。那是一段很长的时间。And we've all had the experience of learning something new, and it didn't take us anywhere close to that amount of time, right? So, what's up? There's something kinda funky going on here. What the research says and what we expect, and have experiences, they don't match up. And what I found, here's the wrinkle: The 10,000 hour rule came out of studies of expert-level performance.我们都学过新东西，但谁也没有花过那么长的时间，对吧？那这是怎么回事呢？有点不对劲啊。研究结果和我们的期望、我们的经验并不相符。我发现，问题在于：1万小时定律针对的是专家。There's a professor at Florida State University, his name is K. Anders Ericsson. He is the originator of the 10,000 hour rule. And where that came from is, he studied professional athletes, world class musicians, chess grand masters. All of this ultra-competitive folks in ultra-high performing fields.佛罗里达州立大学有一位教授，叫做安德斯.埃里克森。1万小时定律是他最先提出的。而这一定律的研究对象，是职业运动员，世界级音乐家和象棋大师。都是竞争激烈的领域，他们又是其中的佼佼者。And he tried to figure out how long it takes to get to the top of those kinds of fields. And what he found is, the more deliberate practice, the more time that those individuals spend practicing the elements of whatever it is that they do, the more time you spend, the better you get. And the folks at the tippy top of their fields put in around 10,000 hours of practice. Now, we were talking about the game of telephone a little bit earlier.他试图弄清楚，在这些领域，登上巅峰需要多久。他发现，练习得越多，在各自的领域花费的时间越多，最后取得的成绩就越大。那些站在最巅峰的人都花了差不多1万小时来练习。这事儿其实就是个以讹传讹的故事。Here's what happened: an author by the name of Malcolm Gladwell Wrote a book in 2007 called "Outliers: The Story of Success", and the central piece of that book was the 10,000 hour rule. Practice a lot, practice well, and you will do extremely well, you will reach the top of your field. So, the message, what Dr. Ericsson was actually saying is, it takes 10,000 hours to get at the top of an ultra-competitive field in a very narrow subject, that's what that means.事情是这样的：有一个作家叫马尔科姆.格拉德威尔在2007年写了本书叫《异类：成功秘诀》，核心内容就是1万小时定律。多练习，好好练习，你就能成功，成为本领域的佼佼者。其实，埃里克森博士真正想说的是，要想在一个竞争非常激烈的特定领域里成为佼佼者，需要花费1万小时的时间。But here's what happened: ever since Outliers came out, immediately came out, reached the top of best seller lists, stayed there for three solid months. All of a sudden the 10,000 hour rule was everywhere. And a society-wide game of telephone started to be played. So this message, it takes 10,000 hours to reach the top of an ultra-competitive field, became, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, which became, it takes 10,000 hours to become good at something, which became, it takes 10,000 hours to learn something.但《异类》这本书一经出版，就迅速冲上了畅销榜首，并保持了整整个月。1万小时定律一夜之间家喻户晓。全民开始以讹传讹。“在竞争激烈的领域登顶需要1万小时”这条信息，变成了“精通某件事需要1万小时”，之后变成了，“想要擅长某事，需要花1万小时”，之后变成了，“学习一个新东西需要花1万小时”。But that last statement, it takes 10,000 hours to learn something, is not true. It's not true. So, what the research actually says -- I spent a lot of time here at the CSU library in the cognitive psychology stacks because I'm a geek. And when you actually look at the studies of skill acquisition, you see over and over a graph like this.但最后这条结论：学习一个新东西需要花1万小时，是不对的，大错特错。实际上，这项研究说的是——我在科罗拉多州立大学图书馆认知心理学区域查了很多资料，因为我是死宅嘛。当你在查找关于习得技能的研究成果时，你经常会看到这张图。Now, researchers, whether they're studying a motor skill, something you do physically or a mental skill, they like to study things that they can time. Because you can quantify that, right? So, they'll give research participants a little task, something that requires physical arrangement, or something that requires learning a little mental trick, and they'll time how long a participant takes to complete the skill.研究者们，无论他们研究的是运动技能，也就偏体力的（技能），还是偏脑力的技能，他们都喜欢用可以计时的事情为例。因为可以量化计算，对吧？于是，他们给研究参与者一个小任务，有些需要体力解决，有些需要动点脑筋，他们来统计参与者需要多长时间完成。And here's what this graph says, when you start -- so when researchers gave participants a task, it took them a really long time, cause it was new and they were horrible. With a little bit of practice, they get better and better and better. And that early part of practice is really, really efficient. People get good at things with just a little bit of practice.这个图说明，刚开始的时候——研究者给参与者的任务，需要很长时间才能完成，因为以前没做过，他们心里又没底。但经过一段时间练习后，他们会越做越好。早期的练习真的非常非常有效。人只需要一点点练习，就可以把事情做得不错。Now, what's interesting to note is that, for skills that we want to learn for ourselves, we don't care so much about time, right? We just care about how good we are, whatever good happens to mean. So if we relabel performance time to how good you are, the graph flips, and you get his famous and widely known, this is the learning curve.有一点很有意思，对于那些我们真心想学的技能，我们就不会在乎花多少时间，对吧？我们只在乎能学得多好，无论这个好的标准是什么。如果我们把练习时间换成擅长程度，图表就倒过来了，就成为了那条著名的学习曲线。And the story of the learning curve is when you start, you're grossly incompetent and you know it, right? With a little bit of practice, you get really good, really quick. So that early level of improvement is really fast. And then at a certain point you reach a plateau, and the subsequent games become much harder to get, they take more time to get. Now, my question is, I want that, right?学习曲线告诉我们，作为初学者，我们都极烂，而且我们也知道自己极烂。只要一点练习，你很快就会做得很好。因此早期的进步是非常大的。之后在一个特定时间点，你进入了平台期，之后进步就越来愈难，要花更多的时间。我想了解的就是那个，对吧？How long does it take from starting something and being grossly incompetent and knowing it to being reasonably good? In hopefully, as short a period of time as possible. So, how long does that take? Here's what my research says: 20 hours. That's it. You can go from knowing nothing about any skill that you can think of. Want to learn a language? Want to learn how to draw? Want to learn how to juggle flaming chainsaws? If you put 20 hours of focused deliberate practice into that thing, you will be astounded.从一开始学，水平极差到比较入门，需要多长时间？理想状态，当然是越短越好。那么，到底需要多久呢？我的研究结果是：20小时。没错。你可以从什么都不懂的菜鸟，到学会任何一种技能。想学一门外语？想学会画画？想学会怎么耍电锯？如果你拿出20个小时，全情投入一件事情，你会感到震惊的。Astounded at how good you are. 20 hours is doable, that's about 45 minutes a day for about a month. Even skipping a couple days, here and there. 20 hours isn't that hard to accumulate. Now, there's a method to doing this. Because it's not like you can just start fiddling around for about 20 hours and expect these massive improvements. There's a way to practice intelligently. There's a way to practice efficiently, that will make sure that you invest those 20 hours in the most effective way that you possibly can.震惊于自己居然能这么厉害。20个小时并不多，也就是每天45分钟，坚持1个月。中间空出几天也没关系。积累20个小时并不难。下面是具体办法。并不是说你瞎玩20个小时，就能精通某件事。还是要用恰当的方法进行练习。要练习得有效率，这才能保证你投入的20个小时是最有效的。And here's the method, it applies to anything: The first is to deconstruct the skill. Decide exactly what you want to be able to do when you're done, and then look into the skill and break it down into smaller pieces. Most of the things that we think of as skills are actually big bundles of skills that require all sorts of different things. The more you can break apart the skill, the more you're able to decide, what are the parts of this skill that would actually help me get to what I want? And then you can practice those first. And if you practice the most important things first, you'll be able to improve your performance in the least amount of time possible.下面就来介绍方法，它适用于任何事情：首先将你想学的技能进行分解。想好你最后要达成什么效果，然后将技能分解成一个个小的部分。绝大部分我们称之为技能的事情实际上是由许多不同的技能组成的。你把技能分解得越细，你就越能决定，这项技能里面的哪些部分能帮我达成目标。你就可以先练习这些。如果你先练习最重要的事情，你就可以在最短的时间内最大限度地提高自己。The second is, learn enough to self-correct. So, get three to five resources about what it is you're trying to learn. Could be book, could be DVDs, could be courses, and could be anything. But don't use those as a way to procrastinate on practice. I know I do this, right? Get like 20 books about the topic, like, "I'm going to start learning how to program a computer when I complete these 20 books". No. That's procrastination. What you want to do is learn just enough that you can actually practice and self-correct or self-edit as you practice. So the learning becomes a way of getting better at noticing when you're making a mistake and then doing something a little different.第二点，要有一定的（理论）学习，能帮你自我纠错。要找到3-5种学习资源。可以是书，可以是DVD，可以是课程，什么都行。但是不要因为这个而推迟练习。我就这么干过。买了20本相关的书籍，说“我要先看完这20本书，然后开始学习编程。”这样不对。这就是拖延。（理论）学习不用太多，能支撑你开始练习就可以了并在练习过程中自我纠错，自我调整。因此（理论）学习能帮你进步，能在你犯错时提醒你然后进行调整。The third is to remove barriers to practice. Distractions, television, internet. All of these things that get in the way of you actually sitting down and doing the work. And the more you're able to use just a little bit of willpower to remove the distractions that are keeping you from practicing, the more likely you are to actually sit down and practice, right?第三点，是要排除干扰。电视，网络，所有的干扰。这些东西都会阻止你坐下来开始练习。你的毅力越大，越能排除干扰，你就越能坐下来，认真练习，不是吗？And the fourth is to practice for at least 20 hours. Now, most skills have what I call a frustration barrier. You know, the grossly-incompetent-and-knowing-it part? That's really, really frustrating. We don't like to feel stupid. And feeling stupid is a barrier to us actually sitting down and doing the work. So, by pre-committing to practicing whatever it is that you want to do for at least 20 hours, you will be able to overcome that initial frustration barrier and stick with the practice long enough to actually reap the rewards.第四点就是要练习至少20小时。我觉得，（学习）大部分技能都存在“沮丧障碍”。就是“我很菜鸟而且我自己知道”的阶段。真的很不爽。谁也不愿意觉得自己蠢。而觉得自己蠢真的会阻止我们坐下来安心练习。所以，无论你想做什么，先给自己定个目标先练习个20小时，你就能渡过最初那段很受挫的时期从而（有信心）将练习持续下去，直到获得回报。That's it! It's not rocket science. Four very simple steps that you can use to learn anything. Now, this is easy to talk about in theory, but it's more fun to talk about in practice. So one of the things that I've wanted to learn how to do for a long time is play the ukulele. 就是这样！并不复杂。学习任何东西都可以按这四步来。好的，理论说起来总是很容易，其实说到练习会更加有意思。有件乐器我想学已经很久了，就是尤克里里琴。
Has anybody seen Jake Shimabukuro's TED Talk? TED where he plays the ukulele and makes it sound like -- he's like a ukulele god. It's amazing.你们看没看过杰克岛袋的演讲他弹奏尤克里里，那声音简直——他就像尤克里里之神。非常精彩。
I saw it, I was like, "That is so cool!" It's such a neat instrument. I would really like to learn how to play. And so I decided that to test this theory I wanted to put 20 hours into practicing ukulele and see where it got. And so the first thing about playing the ukulele is, in order to practice, you have to have one, right? So, I got an ukulele and -- My lovely assistant? Thank you sir. I think I need the chord here. It's not just an ukulele, it's an electric ukulele.我看了之后觉得，“哇，太酷了！”非常精妙的一种乐器。我非常想学。于是我决定验证一下我的理论花20小时来练习尤克里里看效果如何。演奏尤克里里的第一件事，想要演奏，你先得有一把琴，对吧？于是，我弄了一把尤克里里，有请我可爱的助理。谢谢你，先生。我想我还需要一根弦。这可不是普通的尤克里里，是插电的。Yeah. So, the first couple hours are just like the first couple hours of anything. You have to get the tools that you are using to practice. You have to make sure they're available. My ukulele didn't come with strings attached. I had to figure out how to put those on. Like, that's kind of important, right? And learning how to tune, learning how to make sure that all of the things that need to be done in order to start practicing get done, right?最开始的几个小时就像其他所有事情一样。你要把所需的工具准备好。确保它们能正常使用。我的尤克里里最开始是没有装弦的。我要搞清楚如何把它装好。这非常重要，对吧。还要学习调音，准备好一切，确保在开始练习前，一切就绪。Now, one of the things when I was ready to actually start practicing was I looked in online databases and songbooks for how to play songs. And they say, okay, ukuleles, you can play more than one string at a time, so you can play chords, that's cool, you are accompanying yourself, yay you. And when I started looking at songs, I had an ukulele chord book that had like hundreds of chords.Looking at this and "Wow, that's intimidating". But when you look at the actual songs, you see the same chords over and over, right?当一切准备就绪，正式开始练习前我上网找了各种数据和歌本。上面说，哦，尤克里里，你可以弹奏不止一根弦，可以演奏和弦，很棒，你可以自己给自己伴奏。我开始看歌本，我还有一本尤克里里的和弦书，里面有上百种和弦。我当时就傻了，“哇，这太恐怖了。”但是当你真正看歌本的时候，你会发现相同的和弦总是重复出现，对吧？As it turns out, playing the ukulele is kind of like doing anything, there’s a very small set of things that are really important and techniques that you'll use all the time. And in most songs you'll use four, maybe five chords, and that's it, that's the song. You don't have to know hundreds, as long as you know the four or the five. So, while I was doing my research, I found a wonderful little medley of pop songs by a band called Axis of Awesome.其实，弹尤克里里就跟做其他事一样，有一些固定的模式，它们非常重要你会一直用到它们。在大部分歌曲里，你会用到4-5种和弦，那就够了，就能弹出一首歌了。掌握这4-5种和弦就够了，没必要学会几百种。在学习过程中，我发现了一首不错的混音曲，由许多流行歌曲组成，来自“惊奇轴心”乐队。Somebody knows it. -- And what Axis of Awesome says is that you can learn, or you can play pretty much any pop song of the past five decades, if you know four chords, and those chords are G, D, Em and C. Four chords pump out every pop song ever, right? So I thought, this is cool! I would like to play every pop song ever. So, that was the first song I decided to learn, and I would like to actually share it with you. Ready? Alright.看来有人知道他们，“惊奇轴心”认为，我们可以学会可以弹奏，过去50年几乎所有的流行歌曲，只要你能掌握4种和弦，就是G和弦、D和弦、Em和弦和C和弦。每首流行歌曲都由这4种和弦组成。我觉得这太酷了。我想学会弹所有的流行歌曲。于是我决定先学这一首，然后今天跟你们分享。准备好了吗？好的。（音乐演唱部分省略）Thank you, thank you. I love that song. And I have a secret to share with you. So, by playing that song for you, I just hit my twentieth hour of practicing the ukulele. Thank you. And so it's amazing, pretty much anything that you can think of, what do you want to do. The major barrier to learn something new is not intellectual, it's not the process of you learning a bunch of little tips or tricks or things.The major barrier's emotional. 谢谢大家。谢谢。我超爱这首歌。告诉你们一个秘密。当我为大家演奏完这首歌，我达成了练习尤克里里20小时的目标。谢谢你们。真的很神奇，几乎所有的事情，只要是你想做的。学习新事物的最大障碍并不是智力，并不是你要去掌握很多诀窍，走捷径。主要的障碍是情绪上的。We're scared. Feeling stupid doesn't feel good, in the beginning of learning anything new you feel really stupid. So the major barrier's not intellectual, it's emotional. But put 20 hours into anything. It doesn't matter. What do you want to learn? Do you want to learn a language? Want to learn how to cook? Want to learn how to draw? What turns you on? What lights you up? Go out and do that thing. It only takes 20 hours. Have fun.我们会害怕。会觉得自己很笨，在你学一样新东西的开始阶段，你会觉得自己很傻。因此，最大的障碍并不是智力，而是情绪。投入20小时在任何事情上吧。你想学什么都可以。一门新的语言？学习烹饪？想学画画？什么让你兴奋，什么让你开心。那你就去做什么。只需要20小时。去享受吧。

一张图辅助大家理解

这个TED是我最喜欢的，内容实用，讲者又幽默，最后还来了一段自学20小时的尤克里里效果，超赞。

视频主要讲的是，我们学习一项新的技能只要20小时就够了。这似乎有些颠覆了以前的一万小时理论。不过， Josh解释了，一万小时只是针对那些想要在某领域成为专家的人群，而对于那些只想要在日常生活中培养爱好的人来说，20小时已经足够了。

像我这种生活好奇心特强的人，一会学滑板一会学简笔画一会又学口琴的人来说真的太有用了。20小时，也就每天练习45分钟，一个月就能学会一项新技能，一年下来估计我的TO DO LIST都可以打钩了。

但是，想要在20小时内取得立竿见影的效果，也是需要对的方法，比如拆解步骤和任务、寻找可用资源辅助学习等等，这部分具体可以看视频。因为我知道当你看完视频之后，一定跟我一样特别想试一试。

2

只要短短6个月

你也可以学会任何一门外语

https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?width=500&height=375&auto=0&vid=j0139dwqoo0

6个月学会任何一门外语 

 上下滑动，阅读完整版 

People in the back，can you hear me clearly? Ok,good. Have you ever held a question in mind for so long that it becomes part of how you think? Maybe even part of who you are as a person?

在后面的小伙伴，能听到吗？好，行了。你是否曾经把一个问题留在心中很久，结果它已经成为你的一种思路？甚至可能已经成为你自己的一部分？

Well I've had a question in my mind for many, many years and that is: how can you speed up learning? Now, this is an interesting question because if you speed up learning you can spend less time at school. 

有一个问题我思考了很多很多年，就是：你怎样才能加快自己学习的速度？这是一个很有趣的问题，因为如果你可以加快自己的学习速度，你就可以花更少时间在学校里。

And if you learn really fast, you probably wouldn't have to go to school at all.

如果你真的可以学习得特别快，你可能根本就不用去上学。

Now, when I was young, school was sort of okay but I found quite often that school got in the way of learning so I had this question in mind: how do you learn faster? And this began when I was very, very young. 

我小时候上学还凑合，但我常常发现上学会阻碍学习，因此在我心里面有了这样一个问题：怎样才能学得更快呢？（这个想法）在我很小时候已经开始了。

When I was about eleven years old I wrote a letter to researchers in the Soviet Union, asking about hypnopaedia, this is sleep learning, where you get a tape recorder, you put it beside your bed and it turns on in the middle of the night when you're sleeping, and you're supposed to be learning from this.

大约我11 岁时，我给前苏联的研究者写了一封关于睡眠学习的信， 所谓“睡觉学习”，就是拿个磁带录音机放在你床边， 等你入眠后机器开始播放磁带，目的是通过这种方式来学习。

A good idea, unfortunately it doesn't work. But, hypnopaedia did open the doors to research in other areas and we've had incredible discoveries about learning that began with that first question.

这看似 一个好主意，不幸的是它行不通。但睡眠学习确实打开了研究其他领域的大门，并且我们从研究这个问题开始已经有了一些惊人的发现。

I went on from there to become passionate about psychology and I have been involved in psychology in many ways for the rest of my life up until this point.

从那开始我对心理学充满热情，直到现在我已经投入了几十年的时间从事心理学相关的不同研究和工作。

In 1981 I took myself to China and I decided that I was going to be native level in Chinese inside two years.Now, you need to understand that in 1981, everybody thought Chinese was really, really difficult 

1981年，我来到了中国, 并且决定在两年内我的汉语要达到像中文母语者一样的水平。你需要明白的是, 在 20 世纪 80 年代初，所有人都认为汉语是真的很难学，

and that a westerner could study for ten years or more and never really get very good at it.And I also went in with a different idea which was: taking all of the conclusions from psychological research up to that point and applying them to the learning process.

一个西方人可能学习10 年或以上也未必能学好。还有，我带着一种不同的想法，就是把心理学对这个问题研究所得的全部结论运用到我学习的过程当中。

What was really cool was that in six months I was fluent in Mandarin Chinese and took a little bit longer to get up to native. But I looked around and I saw all of these people from different countries struggling terribly with Chinese, 

特别棒的是, 我在六个月内能说流利的中文，不久后，我达到了中文母语者的水平。但我看到周围那些来自不同国家的人在为学习中文苦苦挣扎，

I saw Chinese people struggling terribly to learn English and other languages, and so my question got refined down to: how can you help a normal adult learn a new language quickly, easily and effectively?

中国人在为学习英文或其他语言苦苦挣扎，因此我的问题便细化到：怎样帮助一位正常的成年人更快、更容易和有效地学会第二门语言。

Now this is a really, really important question in today's world. We have massive challenges with environment. We have massive challenges with social dislocation, with wars, all sorts of things going on,

要强调的是，在今天的世界里这是一个非常非常重要的问题。我们需要面对大量的(有关)环保问题的挑战，我们需要面对很多社会混乱和战争的挑战，各种各类事情在发生，

and if we can't communicate we're really going to have difficulty solving these problems.So we need to be able to speak each other's languages. This is really, really important.

如果我们不能沟通那我们将难以解决这些问题。因此，我们需要能够说对方的语言。这真的非常重要。

The question then is how do you do that？Well, it's actually really easy. You look around for people who can already do it, you look for situations where it's already working and then you identify the principles and apply them.

接下来的问题是，怎样做到？这实际上是很容易的。看看你周围那些已经做到的人，寻找在什么情况下，它是有效的，识别这些原则后好好利用它们。

It's called modeling and I've been looking at language learning and modeling language learning for about fifteen to twenty years now.And my conclusion, my observation from this is that any adult can learn a second language to fluency inside six months.

这是一种高科技模仿，而我已经用这种方法研究语言学习大约15到20年了。接着多年的观察，我得到的结论是，任何一个成年人能在6个月内把任何外语学得流利。

Now when I say this, most people think I'm crazy, this is not possible. So let me remind everybody of the history of human progress, it's all about expanding our limits.

呐，当我说成年人能在6个月内学会任何一种外语，大多数人都认为我疯了，这是不可能的。因此，先让我提醒在座各位关于人类历史的进展，所有人类历史都是在扩展我们的极限。

In 1950 everybody believed that running one mile in four minutes was impossible and then Roger Bannister did it in 1956 and from there it's got shorter and shorter. 100 years ago everybody believed that heavy stuff doesn't fly。

在20世纪50年代，所有人都相信跑出4分钟1英里的成绩是不可能的，后来罗杰?班尼斯特在1965年做到了，而从那开始跑1英里的时间变得越来越短。100年前，每个人都相信重的物体不能飞。

Except it does and we all know this. How does heavy stuff fly?We reorganize the materials using principles that we have learned from observing nature, birds in this case. 

它不但可以飞，而且我们大家都知道这个事实。那么，重物是怎样飞的呢？我们观察大自然的原理，在此是鸟飞行的原理，，根据这些我们重新组织材料来使重物可以飞。

And today we've gone ever further, so you can fly a car. You can buy one of these for a couple hundred thousand US dollars. We now have cars in the world that can fly.And there's a different way to fly that we've learned from squirrels.

如今，我们甚至走得更远，你可以驾驶一辆会飞的汽车。你可以花几十万美元购买一辆这样的汽车。我们现在有了会飞的汽车了。在能飞的松鼠的身上我们学会了另一种不同的方式来飞。

So all you need to do is copy what a flying squirrel does, build a suit called a wing suit and off you go, you can fly like a squirrel. 

你只要做的是去复制一只飞鼠如何飞的原理，建造一套翼服，你就可以像一只飞鼠那样可以在天空中飞翔。

Now, most people, a lot of people, I wouldn't say everybody but a lot of people think they can't draw.However there are some key principles, five principles that you can apply to learning to draw and you can actually learn to draw in five days.

那么，大多数人，很多人，我不会说所有人，但很多人认为他们不会画画。然而这里有一些重要的原则，5个原则你可以利用来学习画画并且实际上你可以在5天内学会。

So, if you draw like this, you learn these principles for five days and apply them and after five days you can draw something like this.

如果你平时画成这样，那么你学习5天这些原则, 然后应用它们，5天后，你可以画成这样。

Now I know this is true because that was my first drawing and after five days of applying these principles that was what I was able to do. And I looked at this and I went ‘wow,' so that's how I look like when I'm concentrating so intensely that my brain is exploding. 

我知道这是真的，因为那是我第一次画的，5 天后我应用了这些原则，我可以做到这样。当我看着这个，我“哇”了一声，那就是我非常强烈的专注，专注到我大脑快要爆炸的样子呀！

So, anybody can learn to draw in five days and in the same way, with the same logic, anybody can learn a second language in six months. 

因此，任何人都能够用 5 天时间学会画画，同样地，用同样的方式和逻辑，任何人都可以在 6 个月内学会一门外语。

How: there are five principles and seven actions.There may be a few more but these are absolutely core.And before I get into those I just want to talk about two myths, dispel two myths.

怎么做呢？有 5个原则和 7个行动可以参考。可能有更多，但这些绝对是核心部分。进入这些点之前我想先说说两个误区并消除它们。

The first is that you need talent.Let me tell you about Zoe. Zoe came from Australia, went to Holland, was trying to learn Dutch, struggling a great deal and finally people were saying: 

误区一, 你需要有天赋。让我跟你们说说关于佐伊的事情。佐伊是澳大利亚人，她去到荷兰并尝试学习荷兰语。她非常挣扎，最后人们跟她说，

‘you're completely useless,' ‘you're not talented,' ‘give up,' ‘you're a waste of time' and she was very, very depressed.And then she came across these five principles, she moved to Brazil and she applied them and within six months she was fluent in Portuguese, so talent doesn't matter.

“没用的，”“你没有天赋，”“还是放弃吧，”“你根本就是在浪费时间。”她对此感到非常沮丧。后来，她无意中发现了这 5 个原则，去了巴西，并把这些原则应用到她学习葡萄牙语中，6 个月内，她可以说流利的葡萄牙语了。因此，天赋不重要。

People also think that immersion in a new country is the way to learn a language. But look around Hong Kong, look at all the westerners who've been here for ten years, who don't speak a word of Chinese.

人们还认为学会一门外语最好的方式就是，到说该门语言的国家去。但是看看在香港已经呆了 10 年的西方人，还是一句中文也不会说。

Look at all the Chinese living in America, Britain, Australia, Canada who have been there ten, twenty years and they don't speak any English.

Immersion per se doesn't not work, why? Because a drowning man cannot learn to swim.

看看那些居住在美国、英国、澳大利亚、加拿大 10 年、20 年的中国人，还是不会一句英文。只呆在一个新的国家本身是没有用的。为什么？因为溺水的人是学不会游泳的。

When you don't speak a language you're like a baby and if you drop yourself into a context which is all adults talking about stuff over your head, you won't learn. So, what are the five principles that you need to pay attention to; 

当你不能说那种语言，你就像一个婴儿，如果你进入一个环境，那里全部都是成年人在叽叽呱呱的说一些你完全听不明白的话，你还是学不会。那么你需要注意的那 5 个原则是什么呢？

First: there are four words, attention, meaning, relevance and memory, and these interconnect in very important ways. Especially when you're talking about learning.Come with me on a journey through a forest.

首先，有四个词，注意力、含义、关联和记忆。这些在很多非常重要的方面是相互连接的，特别在你谈论学习时。请跟随我来一趟森林之旅。

You go on a walk through a forest and you see something like this.Little marks on a tree, maybe you pay attention, maybe you don't.

你穿越森林，然后你看到一个像这样的东西。你可能注意到树上的这些小标志，可能没有。

You go another fifty metres and you see this.You should be paying attention.Another fifty metres, if you haven't been paying attention, you see this.And at this point, you're paying attention. 

然后你继续向前走 50 米，你看到了这个。你应该要注意了。再 50 米，如果你还没注意的话，你会看到这个。当看到这个的时候，你就要注意了。

And you've just learned that this is important, it's relevant because it means this, and anything that is related, any information related to your survival is stuff that you're going to pay attention to and therefore you're going to remember it.

你刚刚学习到了这个是重要的，它与你有重要关系，因为它代表这个。任何有关联的东西，任何有关你生存的信息都是值得你注意的，而你给注意力的就会记住的。

If it's related to your personal goals then you're going to pay attention to it, if it's relevant you're going to remember it. So, the first rule, the first principle for learning a language is focus on language content that is relevant to you.

如果它关于你个人目标的，那么你就会注意到它，如果它与你是有关联的，你就会记住它。因此，学习一门语言的第一个原则就是, 注意那些与你息息相关的语言内容上。

Which brings us to tools.We master tools by using tools and we learn tools the fastest when they are relevant to us. So let me share a story. A keyboard is a tool. Typing Chinese a certain way, there are methods for this. 

这就让我们谈到工具。我们通过使用工具来掌握工具，而当这些工具与我们息息相关的时候，我们就可以学得很快。先让我分享一个故事。

That's a tool.I had a colleague many years ago who went to night school; Tuesday night, Thursday night, two hours each night, practicing at home, she spent nine months, and she did not learn to type Chinese.

键盘是一个工具。有不同方法打中文字。这些方法属于工具的一种。多年前，我有一位同事，她上夜校学习中文打字。每周二、周四晚上，她都用 2 个小时上课，然后也在家练习，她花了 9 个月的时间，仍然没学会打中文字。

And one night we had a crisis.We had forty eight hours to deliver a training manual in Chinese. And she got the job, and I can guarantee you in forty eight hours, she learned to type Chinese 

一天晚上，我们有一件紧急的事情。我们有 48 个小时来准备用中文发表一本训练手册。她获得了这个任务 ，并且我可以像你保证，在 48 个小时内，她学会了用中文打字。

because it was relevant, it was important, it was meaningful, she was using a tool to create value.So the second tool for learning a language is to use your language as a tool to communicate right from day one. As a kid does.

因为这是相关的、重要的、有意义的，她在使用一种工具来创造价值。因此，学习一门语言的第二个工具是从第一天开始，用你的语言作为一种工具来沟通，像一个孩子那样做。

When I first arrived in China I didn't speak a word of Chinese, and on my second week I got to take a train ride overnight.I spent eight hours sitting in the dining car talking to one of the guards on the train. 

当我初次来到中国，我一句中文都不会说。第二个星期我乘坐火车过夜。我花了 8 个小时，坐在餐车，跟一位乘警聊。

He took an interest in me for some reason, and we just chatted all night in Chinese and he was drawing pictures and making movements with his hands and facial expressions and piece by piece by piece I understood more and more.

因为某种原因，他对我很感兴趣。我们在那用中文聊了整夜，随着他画画、比划双手并动用他的面部表情，我逐渐地明白越来越多。

But what was really cool, was two weeks later, when people were talking Chinese around me, I was understanding some of this and I hadn't even made any effort to learn that. What had happened? 

但是真正有趣的是，两个星期后，当人们在我周围说中文的时候，我可以明白一些而且我并没有为之付出任何努力。发生了什么？

I'd absorbed it that night on the train, which brings us to the third principle When you first understand the message, then you will acquire the language unconsciously. 

在火车的那晚我已经吸收了中文，这也是我们要说的第三个原则。当你已经理解沟通的信息含义，接下来你将不知不觉下意识的获得该语言。

And this is really, really well documented now, it's something called comprehensible input and there's twenty or thirty years of research on this. Stephen Krashen, a leader in the field has published all sorts of these different studies and this is just from one of them.

而且这是有充足的证据证明的，我们把它称之为“可明白输入”，而这个概念被研究了研究二三十年。此领域的佼佼者史蒂夫·克拉申发布了各类不同的学术研究成果，而这些数据来自他的一个报告。

The purple bars show the scores on different tests for language. The purple people were people who had learned by grammar and formal study, the green ones are the ones who learned by comprehensible input. 

条形图里面的紫色部分显示不同语言测试的成绩。紫色代表那些通过正式学习和学习语法的人，绿色的代表那些通过可明白输入学习的人。

So, comprehension works.Comprehension is key and language learning is not about accumulating lots of knowledge. In many, many ways it's about physiological training.

因此，可明白意思的输入是有效的。理解是很关键的，而学语言本身不仅仅是获取大量的知识。在很多方面，更多的是生理的训练。

A woman I know from Taiwan did great at English at school, she got A grades all the way through, went through college, A grades, went to the US and found she couldn't understand what people were saying. 

我认识一位来自台湾的女士，上学时英文成绩很好，大学英语也很优秀。后来，她到了美国，竟然发现自己听不懂别人在说什么。

And people started asking her: ‘are you deaf?'And she was. English deaf.

然后人们开始问她：“你是聋的吗？”她确实是。英语聋子。

Because we have filters in our brain that filter in the sounds that we are familiar with and they filter out the sounds of languages we're not. And if you can't hear it, you won't understand it and if you can't understand it, you're not going to learn it.  

因为在我们大脑里有一些过滤器会帮助我们过滤熟悉的语言声音进入脑子里，而把不熟悉的语言声音过滤出去。如果你听不到，你不会明白；你听不明白，你将不能学会它。

So you actually have to be able to hear these sounds.And there are ways to do that but it's physiological training. Speaking takes muscle. You've got forty-three muscles in your face, you have to coordinate those in a way that you make sounds that other people will understand.

因此，你必须能够听到这些声音。这里有一些方法来做到，但这些是生理上的训练。说话需要用到肌肉。在你的脸上有 43 块肌肉，你必须协调好这些肌肉来发声，让别人明白你的话。

If you've ever done a new sport for a couple of days, then you know how your body feels. And it hurts. If your face is hurting you're doing it right.

如果你曾经有做过几天新的运动，你会知道你的身体有什么感觉。有点酸疼。如果你的面部有这种酸疼的感觉，那就对了。

And the final principle is state. Psycho-physiological state. If you're sad, angry, worried, upset, you're not going to learn. Period. If you're happy, relaxed, in an Alpha brain state, curious, you're going to learn really quickly, and very specifically you need to be tolerant of ambiguity. 

最后一个原则是状态。心理生理的状态。如果你伤心、生气、担心、沮丧，你将不能学会。绝对是这样。如果你是在一个开心、放松、好奇的大脑状态下，你将很快学会，而且需要明确的一点是，你需要忍受歧义。

If you're one of those people who needs to understand 100% every word you're hearing, you will go nuts, because you'll be incredibly upset all the time, because you're not perfect. 

如果你是那种在听的时候需要百分百听明白别人在说的每一个词的人之一，你会因为你无时无刻（的）沮丧感和你的不完美而发疯了。

If you're comfortable with getting some, not getting some, just paying attention to what you do understand, you're going to be fine, you'll be relaxed and you'll be learning quickly.

如果你对听明白一些、听不明白一些而感到舒服，并把注意力放在你明白的部分，你将会学好，而且你的状态越轻松，你将学得越快。

So based on those five principles, what are the seven actions that you need to take。Number one: listen a lot. I call it brain soaking。

那么在这 5 个原则上，你还需要哪 7 个行动呢？第一，多听。我把它叫做泡脑子。

You put yourself in a context where you're hearing tons and tons and tons of a language and it doesn't matter if you understand it or not。You're listening to the rhythm ,you're listening to the patterns that repeat, you're listening to things that stand out。So, just soak your brain in this.

你把自己置放在听很多很多语言的环境当中，听得明白与否无关重要。在听的时候，你是在听它的节奏、听它重复的模式、听凸出来的词语。像这个泡泡你的脑子。

The second action: is that you get the meaning first, even before you get the words. You go “Well how do I do that?”， I don't know the words. Well, you understand what these different postures mean. Human communication is body language in many, many ways, so much body language. 

第二个行动是，在获取单词之前先获取它的意思。你可能在想，这个我怎么知道的呢？我不知道那些单词！但你可以理解那些不同手势代表的含义。身体语言占领人类交流的一大部分。

From body language you can understand a lot of communication, therefore, you're understanding, you're acquiring through comprehensible input.And you can also use patterns that you already know. 

从身体语言，你可以理解很多对话内容，因此，你通过可明白输入理解、获取它的含义。你还可以利用你已经知道的模式。

If you're a Chinese speaker of Mandarin and Cantonese and you go Vietnam, you will understand 60% of what they say to you in daily conversation, because Vietnamese is about 30% Mandarin, 30% Cantonese.

如果你是说国语和粤语，当你去到越南，你可以明白 60%的日常用语，因为越南话有 30%的国语和 30%的粤语。

The third action: start mixing. You probably have never thought of this but if you've got ten verbs, ten nouns and ten adjectives you can say one thousand different things. Language is a creative process. What do babies do? 

第三个行动：开始混合。你可能之前没有想过这个，但如果你有10个动词，10个名词和 10个形容词，你可以说一千句不同的话。语言是创造的过程。孩子是怎么做的呢？

Okay: me, bat(h)，now，okay, that's how they communicate.So start mixing, get creative, have fun with it, it doesn't have to be perfect it just has to work. 

我，澡澡，现在......这就是他们说话的方式。所以现在开始混合、创造并从中获得趣味。你不需要做到完美，你能沟通就好。

And when you're doing this you focus on the core. What does that mean? Well any language has high frequency content. 

而且当你这样做的时候，你把注意力放在核心上。任何语言都有它的高频内容。

In English 1000 words covers 85% of anything you're ever going to say in daily communication. 3000 words give you 98% of anything you're going to say in daily conversation. 

英语有1000个高频词覆盖你85%的日常交流。而3000个高频词将覆盖98%的日常交流。

You got 3000 words, you're speaking the language. The rest is icing on the cake.

你有 3000个高频词，你将可以说一门外语。剩余的是锦上添花。

And when you're just beginning with a new language start with the tool box. Week number one in your new language you say things like: ‘how do you say that?' ‘I don't understand,'

‘repeat that please,' ‘what does that mean,' all in your target language.

当你开始学习一门外语，从工具箱开始。第一周，你会用新语言说一些像这样的话“那个你怎么说？”“我不明白，”“请重复，”“那是什么意思”全都用你的目标语言。

You're using it as a tool, making it useful to you, it's relevant to learn other things about the language. It's by week two that you should be saying things like: 

你把它当做工具来用，并且利用好它，这对学习该门语言的其他东西是有重大关系的。第二周，你应该会说一些像：

‘me,' ‘this,' ‘you,' ‘that,' ‘give,' you know, ‘hot,' simple pronouns, simple nouns, simple verbs, simple adjectives, communicating like a baby.

“我”、“这个”、“你”、“那个”、“给”、“热”，像个孩子一样用这些简单的代词、名词、动词、形容词来沟通。

And by the third or fourth week, you're getting into what I call glue words. ‘Although,' ‘but,' ‘therefore,' these are logical transformers that tie bits of a language together, allowing you to make more complex meaning。At that point you're talking。

然后第三或第四周，你会进入我称为“胶水词”的这部分。“虽然”、“但是”、“因此”，这些逻辑工具帮助你把语言的小块紧密地结合在一起，让你制造更多复杂的意思。在那个阶段，你已经进入说话的阶段了！

And when you're doing that, you should get yourself a language parent.  If you look at how children and parents interact, you'll understand what this means. 

当你这样做的时候，你应该给自己找位语言家长。如果你看看孩子和父母之间的互动，你会明白这个什么意思的。

When a child is speaking, it'll be using simple words, simple combinations, sometimes quite strange, sometimes very strange pronunciation and other people from outside the family don't understand it. But the parents do.

当一个孩子说话，它会用简单的词，简单的组合，而有时候会发生奇怪甚至是非常怪的声音，如果不是家里人根本就不懂它在说什么。但是父母却知道。

And so the kid has a safe environment, gets confidence. The parents talk to the children with body language and with simple language which they know the child understands. 

因此，孩子有个安全的环境，然后变得有自信。父母用孩子可以理解的身体语言和简单句子跟他们说话。

So we have a comprehensible input environment that's safe, we know it works otherwise none of you would speak your mother tongue.

因此我们有一个很安全的可明白输入的环境。我们知道这个有用，不然的话我们都不会说自己的母语。

So you get yourself a language parent, who's somebody interested in you as a person who will communicate with you essentially as an equal, but pay attention to help you understand the message. 

因此你可以给自己找个语言家长，他是对你感兴趣的一个人，可以跟你沟通得上的，甚至专注于帮助你理解的同辈。

There are four rules of a language parent. Spouses by the way are not very good at this, okay? But the four rules are, first of all, they will work hard to understand what you mean even when you're way off beat. 

语言家长有四个规则。顺便说一下，配偶在这里没有那么好，明白吗？那么 4 条规则是，第一，他们会尽可能地理解你的意思，哪怕你脱离节拍。

Secondly, they will never correct your mistakes. Thirdly they will feed back their understanding of what you are saying so you can respond appropriately and get that feedback and then they will use words that you know. 

第二，他们从来不会纠正你的错误。第三，他们会理解你说的话并给出反馈，好让你适当地回应并获得反馈，并且他们也是说你知道的单词。

The sixth thing you have to do, is copy the face. You've got to get the muscles working right, so you can sound in a way that people will understand you. There's a couple of things you do.  

第六件事你需要做的就是，模仿面部表情。 你需要把肌肉部位用得准确，别人才可以听明白你发出的声音。达到此目的，你需要做几件事情。

One is that you hear how it feels, and feel how it sounds which means you have a feedback loop operating in your face, but ideally if you can look at a native speaker and just observe how they use their face, 

第一，听它是什么感觉的并感觉它是怎样发出声音的，从你的脸上获得反馈。如果条件理想的话，你可以看着母语者并观察他们的面部，

let your unconscious mind absorb the rules, then you're going to be able to pick it up. And if you can't get a native speaker to look at, you can use stuff like this: [slides].

让你下意识地吸收这些规则，然后你将能够获取到它。如果你没有母语者可以看着学习的话，你可以用像这样的东西。

And the final idea here, the final action you need to take is something that I call “direct connect.” What does this mean? Well most people learning a second language sort of take the mother tongue words 

最后一个行动是, 你需要“直接联系”。什么意思呢？大多数人学习外语几乎都是用母语的单词对照目标语言，

and take the target words and go over them again and again in their mind to try and remember them. Really inefficient.

反复地在心中念并尝试记住它们。这样做效率真的很低。你需要做的是意识到你所知道的事情在你的脑海里都有一个画面和感觉。

What you need to do is realize that everything you know is an image inside your mind, it's feelings, if you talk about fire you can smell the smoke you can hear the crackling, 

如果你说到“火”，你可以闻到那个烟味，你可以听到那燃烧的爆裂声，你可以看到那火焰，

you can see the flames, so what you do, is you go into that imagery and all of that memory and you come out with another pathway.So I call it ‘same box, different path.

所以你需要做的是进入那些意象和有关的所有的记忆力，然后从另一条通道出来。我把这叫做“殊途同归”（同一个盒子，不同的路）

You come out of that pathway, you build it over time you become more and more skilled at just connecting the new sounds to those images that you already have, into that internal representation.

你从那条通道出来，你将建立这种技能并且越来越熟练地把新的声音连接到你心里已经知道的画面去。

And over time you even become naturally good at that process, that becomes unconscious. 

往后你甚至很擅长走这个过程，甚至是无意识的。

So, there are five principles that you need to work with, seven actions, if you do any of them, you're going to improve。

因此，你需要运用的那 5 个原则和 7 个行动，如果你运用其中任何一个，都将得到进步。

And remember these are things under your control as the learner. Do them all and you're going to be fluent in a second language in six months.Thank you.

并且记住，作为学习者，这些事情都在你的掌控之下。如果你做到以上全部，你将会在六个月内学会流利的外语。谢谢。

这是TED上爆红了好几年的一个视频，是一名来自新西兰的语言学家Chris Lonsdale，他一直在研究如何快速学习语言。他说，每个普通成年人只要掌握五大原则和七个步骤，都可以在六个月内学会新语言并流利会话。

作为一个学语言的人，其实一直都相信，尽管语言的学习属于长期个人努力的积淀，但掌握一些技巧的确可以起到事半功倍的效果。

比起很多人，我学外语的时候应该算蛮长的。初高中正式学英语，大学专业学了4年的法语。这么多年下来了，也没有达到很精尖的水平，总觉得其中一定有什么问题存在。

直到看到了这个视频，我开始试着转换了学语言的方法，不能说有100%的成效，但跟以前相比，自信了很多，你们也都可以尝试一下。

3

整体性学习法

让你轻松拥有高倍速学习效率

12个月自学完4年MIT 33门课 

 上下滑动，阅读完整版 

So if you’ve been watching the news lately, you have probably seen photographs like this. Students protesting because their government is cutting subsidies to education. And the big part of the reason for this, both the government cutting subsidies and the student outcry is that getting a college education just doesn’t cost what it used to.

So if you graduated more than 2 decades ago, you might be surprised to know that it now costs students over 2.5x as much as it did for you, and that’s in real dollars for any economists in the audience here.

And it’s not an easy problem. On one hand the cost is becoming harder for both students and governments to bear. But in the other hand employers are demanding an educated workforce. They want employees with complex analytical skills. The world now runs out of what we dig out of people’s brains not just what we dig out of the ground. So, that’s the problem.

Now what’s the fix? Well, let me be completely honest with you. I have no idea.

But what I do want to suggest is that maybe we’ve been looking in the wrong place. We’ve been expecting change to come from schools and governments, but what if the change came from us.

I’d like to share my story and suggest that maybe an education doesn’t need to be expensive and what’s more, maybe we can learn better without it.

So in my case I was lucky. When I got accepted to college, I managed to narrow down my choice in major to two choices: Business and computer science. I was really interested in both. With one you get to build companies, with the other you get to build technologies. And these two are not mutually exclusive. After all Bill Gates was a hacker before he built an empire.

But in my school I could only major in one. So I did what any freshman would do, and did a careful rational cost-benefit analysis.

So business it was, and after graduating I have no regrets. I learned a lot and I had a great time.

But after finishing my education, I had this longing for the path not taken. I really wanted to learn computer science. But going back to school didn’t appeal to me, four more years of my life, acceptance boards, tuition bills, I didn’t want to postpone my life and rack up debt, just to pursue a curiosity. I wanted the education, not the school.

And then I remembered that Universities like MIT, Stanford and Harvard, had a habit of putting up classes online for free. I’ve done a few of these before and then a thought occurred to me. If you could learn a class, why not an entire degree. So that was the beginning of an experiment. Would it be possible to get an MIT education in computer science without ever going to MIT? So it’s an intriguing idea, but already you can probably notice some of the complexities and objections this might raise. So going to MIT is a lot more than just what you learn in the classroom.

So how can you possibly hope to replicate something which is such a multifaceted experience? So I like to think college is a lot like eating at a five star restaurant. You’re never paying for just the food. You get the wait staff, elegant decor, the fancy french wines. You’re paying for a complex and multifaceted experience.

And the same is true at college. You get networking with your intellectual peers, research opportunities and credentials from elite institutions. And like the fancy restaurant you get a big bill at the end.

And you know what, sometimes this system works, but just as you probably don’t want to go to a five star restaurant, every time you get hungry, you probably also don’t want to go back to school every time you want to learn something. I didn’t want the five course meal. I wanted my education “a la carte”.

So what mattered most to me, was being able to understand the big ideas of computer science; things like algorithms, artificial intelligence, encryption, and the Internet and being able to implement those ideas in computer programs.

So I decided to make my challenge simple. My goal will be to try to pass the exams an MIT student would do and to do the programming projects. I admit it is a simplification. It omits a lot of the MIT experiences. But for what I wanted to get out of it, it was a pretty good simplification. And what mattered more, it was a simplification that worked.

So I was able to build a curriculum of 33 classes, that with one or two minor exceptions was identical to the course list an MIT student would use. And I was able to build this using only MIT’s free online available information. The only cost was for a few text books which meant I could follow this entire program for under $2000.

Okay. So I have my goal and now I have the material.

Now for the hard part: actually learning MIT classes. I’m not kidding myself, MIT is a really hard school, it’s notoriously difficult even for bright students and what’s more, I’m not going to have the help of faculty, and professors, and classmates that I can easily get help from.

So in theory the project’s doable but would it just be too difficult in practice? And when I told my friends about this, that I was planning on doing an MIT degree on my own, they reinforced those doubts. They told me they couldn’t imagine trying to learn a MIT degree on your own. It’d be too difficult without the constant guidance and support of faculty members.

But that last point didn’t ring true for me, because when I went to college, I was in lecture halls like this one, where the professor would give a talk to an auditorium full of 300 students. Yeah, sure that if I had a question I could rise my hand, but if I really didn’t understand something it was up to me to learn it. So perhaps the doubts and worries over do-it-yourself degree, had more to do with it being unconventional, than it being genuinely more difficult than a formal program.

And as I started doing the first few classes, my results were even more surprising than that. I found I was able to learn faster using this approach than I ever had while in university. So far from being an obstacle, it turned out that not going to MIT had made my job a lot easier.

Okay, so that last bit deserves a little bit of an explanation. After all, an MIT student has access to everything I do, and much much more. How can I possibly have an advantage over a student when I have fewer resources? It defies common sense.

So in order to explain this, I need to do a little bit of a detour. I need to go into the geeky realm of personal productivity. So there is a tool called the TimeLog.

And here is how the TimeLog works. You jot down the starting and the stopping times for every activity you do. And I mean every activity, from when you wake up in the morning, to when you take out the garbage.

Now my guess is that most of you here have never done a TimeLog before. You can just imagine how irritating that is to do.

But if you do one, the results can be eye-opening. So here’s a recent Wall Street Journal article where the reporter did just that. She writes: “I soon realized I’d been lying to myself about where the time was going. What I thought was a 60-hour workweek wasn’t even close. I would have guessed I spent hours doing dishes when in fact I spent minutes. I spent long stretches of time lost on the Internet or puttering around the house, unsure exactly what I was doing.”

Now, because I am a huge geek I’ve done TimeLogs before and I can say the situation is even worse for students. The vast majority of time students spend, isn’t spent learning, it’s spent commuting to class, copying notes at Starbucks, and trying to stay awake in lectures.

If you could total up the amount of time that students spend forming new insights, and remembering facts which is of course what learning is, it would be tiny. And for the most part, this is not even the student’s fault. After all, entrepreneurs often notice a startling difference in their productivity, at a start-up versus a big firm. Big institutions mean bureaucracy. They mean paper work, they mean doing what you’re told instead of what’s important.

So being an educational entrepreneur can therefore offer some learning advantages over people in a formal system. So, take lectures as a perfect example. So, when I would do MIT lectures, when I started doing the classes, I would watch them at one and a half times the speed. This may sound very difficult, but the difference is barely audible in human speech, and of course, if it goes too fast, you just hit rewind.

Students in a regular classroom don’t have access to a fast-forward or rewind button, even though I’m guessing most of them would like one. And the impact of this isn’t trivial. By being able to watch lectures at a slightly faster pace, and watching them sequentially, I was able to take classes that normally span four months, and watch them in two days of real time.

Or take assignments. Students do assignments because they have to. Yes, sometimes they facilitate learning, but sometimes they don’t. For example, if you are struggling with a concept why wait weeks to get your answers back? When I would do a hard MIT assignment, I would do the questions with the solution key in hand, one question at a time, because it’s tight feedback loops like this that cognitive scientists recognize as being critical to learning.

And you don’t need to be a genius to apply these ideas either. Being able to replay key segments of lectures; being able to get immediate feedback on your skills; these are structural advantages that benefit slow learners as much as they benefit fast ones.

So, where am I right now? As of this moment I’ve completed 20 of the 33 computer science courses in the MIT curriculum. And by completed I mean that I’ve passed those final exams and I did the programming projects associated with those classes. And what’s more, because of speed-ups like this that I have mentioned, I’m on track to finishing the program in 12 months instead of 4 years.

So today the big topic is about how technology is going to change educational institutions and classrooms. I think this misses the point. The big upheavals in education aren’t going to be about schools, they are going to be about students. And I am not alone in believing this. There is already grassroot organizations looking to rethink education, not from the top-down but from the bottom-up. These are movements that are not planned by schools or governments, but from students who are fed up with the limited options the current system provides.

Education hacking is the new trend. So billionaire investor Peter Thiel now gives $100,000 scholarship to students, not to go to school but to drop out, and start something interesting. And so when the best and brightest and most motivated start singling their talent by not going to school, the rest of the world will take notice.

And it is not an “all or nothing” proposition either. Jay Cross, the founder of “Do-It-Yourself Degree” is putting together a list of universities based on the number of transfer credits they accept. That means you can go to a real university, and get a real degree, but minimize the amount of time you have to spend learning in the classroom.

Look, I get it, maybe you don’t want to go to MIT or try to learn an MIT degree on your own just for fun, I get that.

But even if you decide to do your education the old fashion way, this still impacts you. The world is changing too fast to believe that learning stops once you get your diploma. Being able to teach yourself complex skills and big ideas is going to be essential to stay ahead.

So, like it or not, most education in the future is going to be self-education. Universities aren’t going away anytime soon, they will always offer things self-education will miss. They’re a great experience even if they’re sometimes an expensive one.

But that said, I believe self-education is the future. If a person like me can learn an MIT degree in one quarter of the time and 1/100 of the financial cost, what’s to stop you from doing it too?

Thank you.

Scott Young是一枚不折不扣的超级大学霸，他应用自己发明的学习方法，完成了10天搞定线性代数，12个月内自学完成了MIT（麻省理工大学）计算机科学4年共33门课程，并通过考试成为MIT历史上最快毕业的人。在MIT里，普通学生一年最多也就扛得了8门课程，因为MIT作业量惊人。

在这个视频里，他就详细讲了他的学习策略--整体性学习法。他说，学习其实不是一件独立的事情，学习就像编织一张大网，让知识与知识做到有所联系。你创造的联系越多，就会记得越牢、理解得越好。（整体性学习放的步骤和细节具体可以看视频）

后来，他不仅通过TED舞台向全世界宣扬自己的学习经验，还出了一本畅销书《如何高效学习》，里面详细介绍了他的学习方法，包括整体性学习策略的核心思想和具体技术，以及快速阅读法、流笔记法、比喻法、内在化等七大方法。

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