2026-04-03
6 分钟The CEO of Air Canada, based in Montreal, spent 300 hours studying French with a teacher
and another 250 hours studying on his own.
And at the end of it all, over a period of six years, he couldn't speak French.
This became a scandal.
He had to resign.
Now, the question is, why does that happen?
It's not unusual.
It wasn't for lack of effort.
He put a lot of effort into it.
At some level, he must have been motivated.
But it happens to lots of people.
They study hard, they think they're learning, and in the end, they can't use the language.
Based on my own experience as a learner, and also what I have recently learned about how the brain learns,
I'm going to tell you why that happens and what you can do about it.
So what happens when you study a language the traditional way?
You learn some words, you learn some rules, you hope that those lodge themselves somewhere in your brain.
You may even be able to produce those bits of information, words, sentences, structures in a test.
But in the end, over the long haul, you can't speak, you don't understand the language that you're trying to learn.
And the reason is, as I now understand, The reason is that the language does n't reside in your brain
as groups of words or grammar rules.