Polyglot Olly Richards Chats about his Story Learning Method, YouTube channel and a Near-Death Experience! (2)
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.
