Hanna's Interview With Steve
Question 1: What makes you keep learning the new languages?
Answer 1:Ok, alright very good question. So you know initially I learned French and I just got turned on, I got turned on to French culture in those days French movies, French literature, thinks French and as a result I did went to France and I studied in France for three years. Chinese? Then I started working for Canadian government and the Canadian government was about to recognize the people of republic of China. And so they need it train up people who could speak Chinese. So when I heard about this, I thought that would be fun I would like to learn Chinese, so I actually started learning on my own. So then I went to the director of personnel and I said I hear you are looking for someone to learn Chinese, you should choose me because I have already started on my own, so from their point of view because they send someone off to learn Chinese, that person may or may not be successful right. So if someone is already motivated enough to start on their own then, that made their decision easier right? So then I stay, I learned Chinese and then I went lived in Japan, so naturally I'm gonna learn Japanese if live in Japan I'm gonna learn Japanese because I have the confidence that I can learn. A lot of foreigners live in Japan and don't learn Japanese because they think it is it's too difficult and so forth. So but by that time as you learn languages you learn one and the second and the third you just have that confidence that you can learn. And so then I just got more and more interested so I learned Japanese and then I learned German, Spanish and so forth so it's just one thing, you know in anything in life if you are successful you want to do it again right. I think if the brain achieves success in something that makes the brain happy so it wants to do more of the same right and if you don't have the success, you don't want to do it right.
Question 2: When you wanna give up, like not only learning new language but also in your life? What do you do to get out from that feeling like slump?
Answer 2: OK well, if we talk about languages, you know there are periods when you are learning a language where you feel you are not making any progress right? There are periods when you've studied very hard, say you've put in a lot of time and then you go out with people, who speak that language and you can't understand what they are saying, and you want to say something and you can't say it and that can be a bit discouraging. But you know what? I know from experience that when we learn language, we have ups and downs. So that well, I might go home and say you know Jee, I didn't do very well, I wasn't able to express myself, you know I was almost reluctant to speak up because every time I tried to say something I kind of stumbled and feel little bit badly. But the next day I'm just ready to go again you know that doesn't have any permanent, doesn't discourage me in the long run and the large part of it is, is your motivation like you're interested in the language, in the culture, in the people then even if you are having any trouble in learning and performing, your interest pushes you. At least that's been my experience and the funny thing about the interest is that the more you get into a language, the more interesting it becomes at least that's been my experience.
Question3: How about you in your life?
Answer 3: In my life? I have to admit that whatever short of wanting to give up [incomprehensible 4:12] ,because I just want to improve and it's very frustrating other than that no, I mean you just go at it again. I never had that feeling of Jee, I'm going to give up, you know it didn't work out, I mean we had like in business with serious problems and you just got to go back. I just don't have the time to sit around here and feel sorry for myself.
Question 4:Do you have any impressive link user?
Answer 4: Well, we have a number like a link you can lookup “The Statistics” and there are some phenomenal learners, we measured in two ways, one is that we can see who are the power linkers? Now there are people who create lot of links, who learned lot of words. But what gives me the greater sense of satisfaction is when I get an email or a comment on my wall or on YouTube saying Jee, thank you Steve, although it's not me, it's actually Mark and other people work on at, but they come to me and they say “Thank you, you changed my life I got such a good job” you know somebody from Poland who got the job at German company, somebody from the U.S.A who studying Spanish and then ended up going to Chile and all the time people who, because it's obvious you mentioned have I ever get discouraged I mean there is problem in Link, we are very small at times site can be little bit unreliable and there are all kinds of disappointments like that, but then, when we get these messages from people thanking us that makes it all worthwhile.
Question 5: What is your goal in life?
Answer 5: I mean I enjoy, I mean obviously for most people family is very important right so to have a very happy family environment, you know children and grandchildren all of that is important and I have my interest. I like you know obviously Languages, history and culture and travel and so just to be able to interact with people, people of different cultures. I mean it's just so much, to just with every language you know which started with French and then with Chinese and then with Japanese and recently with Korean. With each language you just learn so much that's just fun so keeps be going. And I just like to be active, physically active do sports and so you feel good and you have a good appetite for dinner because I like to eat.
Question 6: Do you have any words for people in their 20’s?
Answer 6: Yeah, first I step back for previous. I do believe that Link helps people to learn languages so that gives me a great satisfaction, not only doing it for myself and I'm a big link user and I learned modern languages, but it helps lot of other people, so that makes me feel good. for people in their 20’s,If I thinks back to when I was in 20’s, you can do a lot more than you think you can, so people in their 20’s should reach higher. Don't look at yourself in the mirror so much, should I do that? Should I do this? this is no good, I'm no good. We have lot of hesitation when we are younger and when we get older we realize that very often, we should have gone for more and we didn't because we were not sure, we didn't feel confident, as you get older then there is lesson for those kind of moments of doubt. So my advice for younger people is that you can do more than you think.
