| Steve Kaufmann | |
|---|---|
 Kaufmann in 2020 | |
| Personal information | |
| Born | October 8, 1945 Sweden |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Children | |
| YouTube information | |
| Channel | |
| Years active | 2007–present |
| Subscribers | 1.23 million [1] (August 2024) |
Steve Kaufmann (born October 8, 1945) [a] is a Canadian polyglot and internet personality known for his language-learning content on YouTube, and his online language-learning platform LingQ, which he co-founded.
Kaufmann was born in Sweden in 1945 to Jewish parents from Prostějov in Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. His parents spoke Czech and German. He grew up in Montreal, Canada, after he and his family moved there in 1951 when he was five. [2] [3] [4]
In June 1962, Kaufmann quit his construction job and worked aboard a German tramp steamer in exchange for passage to Europe. After a week in London, he visited Belgium, then spent a year in Grenoble, France. [4] He studied politics at the Institut d'études politiques (Institute of Political Studies, commonly known as Sciences Po) and studied French in Paris. [4] [5] [6] [7]
He hitchhiked through Europe, picking up basic language skills in Spain, Italy and Germany. [4] He went on to join the Canadian diplomatic service, where he began learning Mandarin Chinese in Hong Kong full-time in 1969.[ dubious – discuss ] [4] When he was re-posted to the Embassy of Canada, Tokyo in the early 1970s, he learned Japanese. [8]
After his role as a trade commissioner, he used his language abilities in commercial trade, [9] living in Japan for nine years. [10] He eventually learned more languages, mostly later in life. [8]
Along with his son Mark, Steve co-founded a language learning platform in 2007. [11]
"The best way to learn a language is to massively ingest it, by listening and reading. Listening and reading are so powerful. If you can read the books, you know the language. To get to know a language takes a lot of time and a lot of interacting with it — and a lot of that time has to be on your own. I think it’s better to work on comprehension and vocabulary without pressure to reproduce the language (by speaking)."
Kaufmann appears at conferences to speak on his language learning techniques and abilities. He also has social media channels where he discusses language learning, [13] [14] primarily to assist learners. [12] [15]
He was a founding organizer of the North American Polyglot Symposium. [12] He travels to learn languages, and has given interviews in native languages on television and on YouTube, including in Chinese (both Mandarin and Cantonese), Russian and Ukrainian. [16] He has been a regular contributor to the Huffington Post . [17]
Kaufmann has spent over 50 years studying languages. [18] He advocates total immersion in the learning process. [19] [20] He places great emphasis on absorbing the language by reading texts and by not worrying about unfamiliar words, believing that they are gradually acquired through repeated reading. Though he supports using techniques such as flashcards for memorizing difficult words, he spends most of his learning time listening to native speakers and reading. He is particularly fond of reading books on the history of the country or region of the language he is learning, written in that language. [3] He prefers not to have a fixed study schedule and enjoys listening to content in his target languages while performing other tasks. [21] He believes that age does not impede learning a new language and that older people can learn languages as well as younger people. [22] He believes mistakes are a natural part of the learning process, and that people can be considered fluent despite making mistakes. [3]
Kaufmann started learning Russian, his ninth language, when he was 60. [8] As of 2024, he has an understanding of 20 languages, though his ability to speak and write in them to a highly proficient level varies considerably. He has said that he rarely writes in the languages, and that speaking languages he has not used for a while can be initially challenging. [3]
As of May 2023, Kaufmann speaks these languages to varying degrees:
He has also learned some Greek and Turkish and is currently learning Arabic and Persian. [23] In 2024, he stated that after studying Turkish he will focus on Arabic and Persian, and spends time listening to Arabic TV series and Al Jazeera news, and reading books on Arabic and Persian history. [3]
Prominent language-acquisition scholar Stephen Krashen has studied Kaufmann's approach to learning, and those of other polyglots such as Kató Lomb. Krashen claims the success of Kaufmann and other polyglots as independent support for his own ideas on second language learning, and sees Kaufmann's approach as a model for other language learners. He has praised Kaufmann as "really good, no question", and described him as "my language therapist, helping me." [24] [25]
Steve Kaufmann is the father of political scientist Eric Kaufmann and ice hockey player Mark Kaufmann.
First of all, I should say that October the eighth was my birthday…
Stephen D. Krashen is an American linguist, educational researcher and activist, who is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Southern California. He moved from the linguistics department to the faculty of the School of Education in 1994.
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The input hypothesis, also known as the monitor model, is a group of five hypotheses of second-language acquisition developed by the linguist Stephen Krashen in the 1970s and 1980s. Krashen originally formulated the input hypothesis as just one of the five hypotheses, but over time the term has come to refer to the five hypotheses as a group. The hypotheses are the input hypothesis, the acquisition–learning hypothesis, the monitor hypothesis, the natural order hypothesis and the affective filter hypothesis. The input hypothesis was first published in 1977.
Extensive reading (ER) is the process of reading longer, easier texts for an extended period of time without a breakdown of comprehension, feeling overwhelmed, or the need to take breaks. It stands in contrast to intensive or academic reading, which is focused on a close reading of dense, shorter texts, typically not read for pleasure. Though used as a teaching strategy to promote second-language development, ER also applies to free voluntary reading and recreational reading both in and out of the classroom. ER is based on the assumption that we learn to read by reading.
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