I'm not a huge fan of the sales-talky, motivational speaker tone that Benny uses. [Also what I don't like about Tim Ferris]. That being said, I think the basic message of, "the way to learn a new language is to speak it as much as humanly possible", is important enough that it deserves to be repeated despite it being pretty obvious.
I spent eight months studying French for a few hours every Saturday morning in a class and a few hours a week doing homework, I felt like I was making good progress in the class but without actually being able to usefully speak French. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had a language learning experience like this.
The thing is - I could (kind of) use two past tenses and one future tense while still stumbling over basic introductions and asking for directions. This doesn't make any sense from a utility point of view.
So I hired a succession of French teachers on Skype to have the same basic conversations with - the kind of basic transactional or quick introduction "speed dating" type conversations that I'd actually be likely to have with native speakers on a frequent basis. Surprise, surprise, my French abilities got better by leaps and bounds. It cost less than I was paying for the classes as well.
I now think that organised group classes are a waste of money for adult learners. I can find native language French teachers that do classes on Skype for less than £10 / hour, which is about the price of group classes with 6-10 people in them. Spending an hour which is 45 mins me talking and 15 minutes of corrections has done more for my spoken French than an hour of group classes where I actually have maybe 5 minutes cumulatively to speak.
Yeah, sometimes it is a little boring spending an hour having conversations about hotel bookings and flight reservations, but I can actually do those things pretty confidently after practicing them for two hours.
There is no better teacher than to actually go out and speak the language, so I'm not surprised you got good results one-on-one. Similarly, but probably with less efficiency, I'd like to recommend Michel Thomas' language tapes. They focus entirely on conversation and active use of the language.
One thing we should shy away from is the marketing message of "learning like children", like Rosetta Stone is doing. It is fairly well documented that adults can learn languages at least close to as well as children [0][1], but adults learn differently.
Here's something you can do as an adult which a child lacks the prerequisite hooks to do:
- English words ending in -ible or -able – possible, table, comfortable, probable – have the same meaning in French. They're pronounced differently (ending sounds like -sibl or -abl in French, not -səbl̩ or -eɪbəl)
- Same with -ent and -ant: important, different, etc. Usually adds an -e when writing. (pronounced with -ɑ̃ not -ənt)
- Also words ending in -ary: Military, necessary. Change the ending to -aire when writing. (pr. -ɛʁ not -ɛɹi)
Michel Thomas is excellent - I learned enough French from his course (having never learned any French before) to have some basic conversations with people I was staying with in France. Nothing groundbreaking or deep, but general basic chit chat about the weather, what to do, where to go, how to get there etc.
Ah, thank you! I'll definitely be signing up there, then. I'm not in the UK, and our version (craigslist) doesn't really have the userbase for language lessons, but I might try posting a want ad.
A language learning site that greets me in computer-translated German "Werden Sie fließend in jeder Sprache" makes me hesitate. Am I supposed to turn into fluid?
I moved to Rome and got a job at a small Italian company with just a handful of other people. I'd never studied Italian before (but French and Latin, yes) and just simply turning up and having to struggle through reading and writing emails in Italian, talking to people in Italian, even terribly broken and incorrect Italian, has done for me in 6 months what would have taken about 8 years of non-intensive study. My grammar isn't great but that's for lack of actively studying it, I'm too busy. Even still, I self-correct all the time and my conversational and comprehension skills are comparatively through the roof. There really is no substitute for immersion and practice. The more familiar with something you become, the more you start to recognise patterns and where your own styles fall down -- you start to notice that others use certain prepositions in a context where you'd use a different one, and you check and self-correct. All the time you're getting better and more comfortable with the whole process; listening, speaking, pronunciation, stringing more and more complex sentences together. It's a holistic process and there is simply no substitute for jumping in the deep end, and the more organic and 'real' it can be, the better. A stale classroom a few times a week is almost doing you a disservice by making you think you're studying -- you might be better off saving your time until you can commit yourself to it properly (for e.g. reading a newspaper every day, speaking for an hour every day with a native speaker, reading and writing in forums/IRC in that language).
Personally I found watching films with subtitles (the original subtitles, I mean - same stuff they're saying on the screen, like a version for hearing-impaired people) very helpful in learning
Good tips but the 3-month claims create unrealistic expectations. It likely results in higher book sales but means most people will give up before they actually become fluent in a foreign language.
Fluency, also, is difficult to define. I listened to a couple minutes of Benny stammering his way through a Mandarin language interview. His level seems on par for 3 months of study, so perhaps he equates basic communication as "fluency." If I can talk to a stranger on the bus for 10 minutes, does that mean I'm fluent? Not according to most language rating scales, though they are admittedly very subjective.
The Foreign Service Institute of the US State Dept sorts foreign languages into three groups, based upon how long it takes a typical student to reach professional competency (CEFR C1, IFL 3/3+):
Professional competency means: can you perform office functions in that language? Most non-Latin languages take a year of dedicated study (1000 hrs) to reach fluency. Exceptionally difficult languages, such as Arabic or Mandarin, take 2 years. Also, it's debatable whether even the 3/3+ moniker equates to fluency. I scored a 3+ in Russian and there are many, many situations that I cannot navigate in that language.
So could you, for instance, learn Arabic to a C1 level within 3 months? It's highly doubtful and shame on the author for giving people that impression.
I speak three languages, more or less. Much of what this guy says is either obvious or wrong. There's not much in-between.
The big irritant is his absurd claims about adult learning capabilities. When I was in my teens, I learned Cantonese as a native English speaker. In my 40s, I learned Italian. Cantonese -- an extremely difficult language for English speakers -- was far easier to learn.
In truth I think there is one overriding rule to successfully learning a foreign language. No matter how many classes you take or Rosetta Stone CDs you buy, will never really learn a language unless you are forced to speak it ALL THE TIME. If you want to learn German, move to Germany.
When foreign PhD students come to the US, I tell them that if they want to be effective researchers in computer science, they must know English well. And step one for doing that, as PhD students in the US, is to get roommates who do not speak their native language.
I don't know, nowadays it seems that if you look hard enough you can find published papers demonstrating any point, and it seems even easier to find paper "proving" something against common sense and experience.
Here it is the case: My Chinese wife is a perfect French speaker but she still can't hear or pronounce the difference between "gato" and "cado". I work in Chinese, in a 100% immersion, and tones are still not natural to me. And our bi-cultural kid, at 3, has better tones than me, and has no problem with d and t, or g and k.
I won't look hard for papers but I would be surprised if none has ever "proven" that babies hear and execute the full palette of sounds, and learning a language specializes (by narrowing) this skill, removing parts not used in the context to differenciate meanings.
Part of the confusion, I think, is that people unnecessarily require "perfect pronunciation, hearing, and intonation" in their definition of "fluency". You mentioned that your wife is fluent in French, but does not have native-like French "hearing". Perhaps she also speaks with a non-native accent. That doesn't detract from her fluency. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, would be considered to be fluent in English even though he speaks with a heavy accent.
Babies and pre-pubescent children do indeed have a distinct advantage when it comes to learning sounds, tones, and pronunciation for a language [1][2]. It's also been observed that children are more likely to sound native (in language 2) if they move to another country and learn that second language prior to puberty (see again, Nagle [2]). So, gbog, if your child speaks/hears French, Chinese, and English regularly before hitting puberty, he/she will likely sound native in all three languages. But this advantage doesn't nullify the claim that adult learners can still become fluent in a foreign language. It just means that adult learners might never sound exactly like a native speaker, even though motivated learners can achieve near-native pronunciation in their target language [3].
[1] Babies are born with the ability to hear/distinguish between the sounds of all world languages, but this ability starts to diminish around the age of 10 months (pp 39-40, The Bilingual Edge, King and Mackey, http://www.amazon.com/The-Bilingual-Edge-Second-Language/dp/...).
[2] "Critical period research clearly demonstrates that the probability of a near-native L2 phonology rapidly diminishes as we age", Charles Nagle, "A Reexamination of Ultimate Attainment in L2 Phonology: Length of Immersion, Motivation, and Phonological Short-Term Memory", http://www.lingref.com/cpp/slrf/2011/paper2913.pdf
[3] "The results of this study highlight the fact that learners appear to be able to achieve near-native pronunciation without significant formal instruction in pronunciation which perhaps also evidences the role of implicit learning in L2 phonology...", Nagle, http://www.lingref.com/cpp/slrf/2011/paper2913.pdf
>if you look hard enough you can find published papers demonstrating any point
Don't be willing to make an argument against all science while trying to win one discussion. Just give your anecdote and let people take it as they will.
Bullshit. Even a cursory review of the research shows profound differences in child and adult learners. This is ground so well covered that it's assumed knowledge.
Have a look at (Harvard linguist) Steven Pinker's book The Language Instinct. It gives a great overview. Or if a book on linguistics isn't your thing, then read the recent studies on critical period hypothesis for SLA, such as Mayberry and Lock, 2003.
I've never even seen any claims that there is a significant difference in language learning ability between teenagers and adults. There is strong evidence that very young children (younger than three years) can pick up the phonetic aspects of languages in a way that adults simply can't and people often simplify that to "young children are better at languages".
Given that this guy's key message seems to be about the importance of actually using the language (over taking classes or reading textbooks) I'm not sure that you actually disagree with him.
Slightly offtopic: I live in a city in Brazil whose heritage is basically german so I know a lot of people trying to learn german here. A particular friend of mine used to work for an IT german company and went to Germany a couple of times and he said every time he tried to speak their language they'd frown at him or feel like "conversation's not flowing" and switch to english. Other friends living in Germany (Stuttgart, Munich, Berlin) and also in Switzerland (Zurich) said the same happens to them with some frequency. I never heard about it happening with other languages or in other countries, so why is that? Any germans out there care to comment on this?
Edit: just to make it clear, this is purely out of linguistic curiosity
Depends on who you are, and how good they know you. Germany is a country that historically had a lot of low skilled poorly educated immigrants working in professions that require almost no skills. Those people never really integrated (not always their fault).
When unknown person approach a German with broken/half-broken/non-perfect German skills, that German has immidiate prejudice about your social status and education level. If your friend is from Brasil, I guess skin colour also plays a role here. Happened to me numerous times. You will get much better treatment speaking English, since that level the playing fields and then they consider you as an equal. Also happened to me numerous times.
So yes, the only way to actually speak German in Germany and not be intimidated is to speak it with people that you already knows and you can consider friends.
Australian here, but I can confirm that the times I went to Germany and tried to speak German, almost everyone pleaded with me to switch to English. I don't think my German advanced much as result. I was even briefly mocked by hotel staff (who were otherwise great): "Ahh yes, you are the one person in this hotel who only speaks English."
Taxi drivers were an exception, they did not seem to have strong English skills. As a result, the most enjoyable German conversation I ever had was with an elderly taxi driver as we stumbled through our knowledge of each other's language.
There are also other possibilities why they preferred English (Swiss here, so take it with a grain of salt when I refer to Germans).
To show off their English skills. Although this can even happen when their English is worse than your German. Especially Germans are really proud to be "international" even though it's not always justified.
Or they don't want you to stagger about in a language you don't know very well. So some want to be polite and spare you the trouble to speak it. Of course that doesn't help you but you should then insist and say something about "learning this beautiful language" and then usually they can't deny you this.
In IT it's quite custom that anybody speaks English when somebody is around that doesn't speak German as you are expected to know the language well enough. After all in IT, you need English every day. For Zurich, which has a great number of foreigners, this applies as well.
For Switzerland in general, remember that the Swiss dialect is quite different from Standard German and there are many Swiss who are not that comfortable speaking Standard German so switching to English is an option when they actually don't want you to notice how bad their German is.
I think this was his personal experience, or maybe his german level is too basic to be useful. I’m a brazilian living in Germany and people here are very open and forgiving about your german even if you are still learning and make a lot of mistakes, they really like their language and prefer it over english if it’s possible, at least that’s my experience.
The same thing happened to me in China when I tried to speak Mandarin. Fortunately, however, there were many people who couldn't switch to English because they didn't speak it.
> I never heard about it happening with other languages or in other countries
Same thing happened to me all the time in Japan (to be fair, my Japanese is essentially non-existent except for a handful of phrases) and France (significantly more proficient, but still not a proficient speaker). The Japanese in particular seemed put off by butchering their language.
I think you are absolutely right about "being forced to speak it" part but moving to a different country may not always be a practical solution. Some people, myself included, learn foreign language for fun and moving to a different country would just make it an expensive hobby.
One thing I have discovered is there are fun ways to learn a new language even if you are on your own. I am learning french and I love watching movies so every now I then I watch a french movie first with subtitles and then without. Most of the times I miss the words but I am getting familiar with sounds and every time I pick up french for dummies I get more confident.
But you are right. One must spend time with the language one is learning.
I think you are right on with my take on the article.
I can read multiple of dead languages BUT I can never speak any other language but English. I can read (non-modern) Hebrew, Classical/Konie Greek, Aramaic, Latin and somewhat (not dead) German. Thank you Theology Studies the Nerds great subject to learning language and history.
I now work with 250 students in Head Start (3-5 years old) and about 20% speak mainly Spanish and I can speak to any 5 or 6 year old in Spanish fairly well, but adults I sound like a 5 year old. I try to talk with the staff where 50% speak fluent Spanish and well they always go back to English and I never progress. :(
It gets worse. I'm bilingual since childhood. I mostly speak English.
People can very obviously tell that the second language is not my native tongue. This is after 30 years of using it.
It comes down to how much of your day is spent conversing in a language, I'd guess that if it's less than 20% it's a dead giveaway. Speaking to adults is completely different than speaking to children.
The Pareto principle he cites is actually deceiving. Yes learning 20% of the vocab gives you 80% of the commonly used words. Now try and go to 90%. If I remember you have to double effort. So e.g. if 80% is 1500 words, 90% is 3000, 95% is 6000, 97% is 12000, etc. It's diminishing returns.
The problem is to have adults conversations all the time you probably need a vocabulary of around 6000 words, depending on the context of the conversation.
Ever hear what a foreigner sounds like when they speak broken English or English with a strong accent? That's exactly what you sound like when you're talking to someone else in their language. Like some complete retard. Mess up one single thing or say something unidiomatic and the show's over. If they feel their English is better they'll switch immediately, but just keep going and hopefully they'll switch back.
And even after you've mastered 10s of thousands of words (you can estimate it for english here
http://testyourvocab.com/
) you're still going to be struggling with cultural references to children's shows which were popular 30 years ago or politics from 5 years ago.
That's a pretty interesting test, thanks for sharing it. The funny thing is I had to pass over a bunch of words I know from french/latin/italian that I haven't seen used in English so I don't know whether the meaning has shifted or not in the transfer. Stupid English.
Perhaps if you want to learn profanities? I've been on a few foreign language servers with text-based messaging (Enemy Territory) and all requests for help with slang terms has always met with attempts to deceive me:
Should I tutoyer when I'm being made fun of by strangers in the chatbox of an FPS. Language is so complex. Actually it's probably because we drop "s'il vous plait" in to speech in our family (or sometimes asante sana or danke schon) so I'd think of that first before parsing it as a vous form. Good spotting.
I'd appreciate it if a few people could download it and provide feedback. The store is getting quite crowded so I'm looking for ideas to find a niche. I've got versions for several other languages, which I outsourced the translations. At this point, I'm not sure where to make further investment.
Good offline mode is the biggest thing missing from the current apps IMO. DuoLingo's was mediocre but on the latest update they completely broke it. Memrise lets you download a lesson but most of the mnemonics, which are the big draw, don't actually download, so it loses a lot of its functionality and just turns into flashcards.
I do most of my studying on my commutes which are all on the subways.
I think it's simpler than that: something about the Latin languages makes them unusually hard to pick up for fluent English speakers. This strikes me as one of the main reasons Latin stayed being taught in the English speaking world for so long. Once you've got one the rest seem to follow, but that first one seems to be brutal.
Compare that with the Asian languages, and I know more people that claim to have picked up substantial bits of Japanese through importing videogames than is remotely reasonable, and have had a sort of light experience of it myself. The very alienness of it prevents attempts to link it back to your previous context, when constantly trying to do so is, in my experience, a perpetual tarpit.
If we define "learning foreign language" as an ability to read classic texts without dictionary or skipping words and being able to watch classic movies or TV without subtitles.. Well, it took me almost 10 years, but now I could read, say, Feynman's lectures without stumbling.
In a world of punks being able to say "hi, how are you, how much for this" in several languages is called "polyglot".)
For English it took me from 10 years old to 20 to be able to fool people in online conversations that I might be native. Now at 33 I am still daily picking up new English idioms and especially cultural background, but finally it is getting rare to encounter unknown words or phrases.
I still (rightly IMO) hesitate to say I can speak Japanese, even though I have lived here for 5 years and spent two of those solely studying the language. I encounter an unknown word in almost every sentence. Like someone here commented for German, having to explain so many words or think of synonyms is annoying enough that a conversation switch to English can happen if it is possible. Imagine talking to a speech recognition system that doesn't understand 10% of your sentences. It quickly makes you want to start typing instead.
I once heard a definition that you are not really competent in a foreign language until you're able to solve crosswords in it. This principle is obviously tongue-in-cheek, but there's much truth to it in my opinion.
I can't do crosswords in English, my native language. I definitely can't breeze through classical texts. It's important to be realistic on the other end of the scale too.
Criteria like this are way too demanding, and it's one of the biggest problems in language learning that makes people feel worthless; having elitist standards that you "don't" speak a language unless you speak it like a university professor, regardless of the fact that you may not speak your mother tongue that way.
Well there's different types of crosswords. I guess they mean the ones that focus on the language itself (eg. idiomatic stuff) and not requiring some obscure knowledge
I personally like using the ability to understand stand-up comedy as the gold standard of fluency. I've lived 10 years in France now, and I was already capable of doing a job interview in French on arrival, until recently I only had French friends, only watched films / tv in French, read books in French 90% of the time, and I still struggle with comedy. Part of it is that they speak so fast, part of it is cultural references which I don't have, but a lot of it is that nuance is a major part of the comedian's trade, and I'm more or less nuance tone deaf, even after all these years of effort.
That's probably a very strict definition. I'd say that, if you're able to have a decent conversation without feeling frustrated all the time, you're doing good...
Let's say "able to study in a foreign university".
This, btw, automatically disqualifies all those tourists who think the could speak Hindi. Go ahead, visit a lecture in Benares Hindu University, or just a class in an Indian secondary school.
This is why I admire all those Asian and Indian students of MIT or Stanford.
I am biased because I work with tourists and have lived in Kathmandu for years, so I have seen innumerable cases of unsubstantiated self esteem or banal narcissistic personality disorder and tens of thousands of punks of any kind.)
this guy is a fake. i am polish and i can guarantee that there is no way in the world that one can speak the way he spoke in the video in just 1 hour of learning. polish is very hard to learn (ask my wife, she's an Aussie and after 10 years she still cannot pronounce my name/surname correctly). great PR stunt but hardly believable. i speak 5 languages but it took me 20 years to learn them (excluding polish) and it's not a walk in the park......definitely not 3 months......just ask any linguist or foreign language teacher. it's just like saying that you can read a programming book or watch a video tutorial and get a job hacking for google or facebook. what a load of bullshit! btw, i work as a programmer and used to work as a teacher
He only picked up bits and pieces. A Polish native speaker myself, I think it's entirely believable.
Creating an impression of language fluency out of a very limited set of words and phrases is a talent in its own right.
It certainly has an element of deception to it :) but he can still be legit in the sense that you mean.
Polish pronunciation is notoriously difficult, but once you can make yourself understood, pronunciation is of secondary importance. There's a lot of people with a near-native command of foreign language with accent as thick as mud.
I agree about the talent for creating the illusion of fluency.
I think that's the real difference maker for Tim's guest blogger, he has a strong sense of what a language is in the abstract, a sense for how people use language in general, and practice at getting through the awkward time when you are frustrating to speak with.
Those universal gifts are the most valuable ones of language learning, and they can come while learning your second language, but they come faster when you have dabbled in 4 or so.
Some of what Benny does is based on Boris Shektman's teaching at the US Foreign Services Language Institute. It's extremely pragmatic (borderline cheating) At time, really steamrolls the conversation with a set of trick and tactics. It's not really knowing the language in any sense, but it does massively facilitate learning in immersive environments. It's language learning for people without time to take classes and it works. It takes a certain personality to steamroll someone and control the conversation, so hence its use in US diplomatic language training :)
Benny & Tim make some claims and use words like "learn" and "know" differently than you or me. I agree with you and don't agree with much of their preamble copy, but what they're doing is long held in aggressive training scenarios (foreign service postings, for instance) and a solid hack.. well, for type-A extroverts willing to dominate a foreigner socially.
My native language is Polish too. I wouldn't be 100% sure that this guy is a fake. Polish is indeed a hard language - pronunciation is tricky and there is a lot of conjugation struggle to get through (even names are changing suffixes dependently on context).
What I think happens on the video is that the guy has a list of different phrases/words (prepared for this particular situation) and maybe some pronunciation notes. That's ok, I would do exactly the same. You just cannot memorize all the necessary core words in one hour but you can use them easily if you have a reference material (plus you keep the conversation going and practice more).
He does standard mispronunciations that every non-native Polish speaker does at the beginning. However, you can hear that when the lady replies in Polish, there is nothing to indicate that he actually understood what she said. He gets the questions after she gives him some hints in English. If he was preparing just for an hour for this skype call it is certainly an excellent starting point.
>My native language is Polish too. I wouldn't be 100% sure that this guy is a fake. //
Agreed on that second part. I'm skeptical too but having seen Benny's Youtube videos and knowing that he already speaks a dozen or more languages and that he has reportedly learnt them enough to be conversational in months ... I think he has a handle on how to make specific sounds already and probably knows a lot of cognates.
He's not just a random guy, he appears to be trying very hard; I wouldn't call it fake without further evidence; he clearly has a great talent and many people appear to have had success using his methods (which he passes on for free).
In this TEDx video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZqUeWshwMs, he says he started learning new languages at 21. He looks mid- to late-30s to me which tends to support his "3 months" claim as being viable as well.
Pronunciation specifically can be hard to learn without actually focusing on it, such as recording your own voice or having a tutor specifically teach you how to make each sound. A normal class setting is very bad for learning pronunciation while a one on one conversation with a teacher focusing on pronunciation will bring much better results.
Thats possible, but some people do learn languages a lot faster than other. Kato Lomb for example. That guy is also a polygloth, so I'm sure he would learn faster than I would (or another random person).
it's true that some people learn faster then others and that some people can understand notions and ideas that no one else can (at last not as quickly) but there is no way in hell.....i repeat NO WAY IN HELL that one can have a conversation in polish after studying the language for 1 hour (regardless of how bad their pronunciation or choice of vocabulary is). take it from a polish native who is also a polyglot. i guess some people like to believe scams like these and would be quite happy to also accept the fact that you can become a millionaire in 3 months if you only follow my technique etc. or you can learn how to advance your stock market analysis skills if you only try hard enough/have a knack for it/follow me blindly etc. put it that way......if it's so easy, how come nearly every school in the world offers some sort of foreign language curriculum yet after years of studying the given language 99.9% of students will not remember anything past counting to 10 and 'how r u'-type phrases? seeing is believing but not in this case. good luck learning.....i suggest starting with polish :)
If polish is going to be his 13th language and he has already strong bases in russian and eu languages, I don't see why it should be impossible. Keep in mind that is not true that is one hour. Is all his life learning other languages that is applied here. (there's a famous quote among artists about this that i cannot remember right now...)
Anyway my point is, that you are able to pick up CoffeeScript in one hour if you are fluent in javascript and python, aren't you?
> if it's so easy, how come nearly every school in the world offers some sort of foreign language curriculum yet after years of studying the given language 99.9% of students will not remember anything past counting to 10 and 'how r u'-type phrases? seeing is believing but not in this case.
How many of them really have the incentive to be efficient? Maybe as long as the students are learning something, that is enough. I can't imagine that a large swath of Germans are going to form a protest ten years after graduation and proclaim that "my subpar Italian ruined my life", or something like that. English has been very useful for me, but I feel like I've learned most of it from the Web, video games, movies, other pop culture ... it's hard to tell how important it was at this point, though.
Most teaching is variations on "throw information at your senses until something sticks", and the input is reading, doing exercises, discussing. There's nothing about specific mnemonic techniques, just read it and hope that you recall it. In elementary school, they told us to remember 50 English words by trying to write them down and reading them, reading them and then trying to recall them, rinse and repeat. This technique is laughably inefficient compared to trying to associate the words with something, like associating things that the word sounds like or remind you of, perhaps in your own language.
I live in Poland. There's a lot of Mormon missionaries coming here, mostly Americans (but not exclusively). I have to say that I am very impressed by their command of Polish. As far as I know, they only attend a 3 months course prior to leaving their home country. And they're really fluent. Motivation?
The single most important concept of learning a language is personal motivation. I always thought that without that needing a language (because you live in a country where you need to use it, because your girl/boyfriend speaks it, because you want to read some books/watch movies and are only available on a different language) is extremely difficult to get it.
If you think that learning a language would be cool, or it will make a good job opportunity... that strong need is not that present, and everything is way more difficult..
Learning French in France or Spanish in Spain is easier than learning Dutch in Netherlands because everybody speaks at least OK English, there is just no need to learn Dutch. Getting a little desperate and lonely helps a great deal to picking up a language faster
Motivation, sure.
Full time focus during those three months. A lot of people will say that they've studied a language for a certain number of months or years but how many hours have they put in over that time?
I think the biggest thing is that you're likely seeing them after a few weeks in country, remember that these guys have to get out and do their pitch for 8+ hours a day, every day. So their command of basic greetings, introductions, and specialised religious and other context appropriate vocabulary would be expected to get better very quickly.
I believe few of the points he made were remarkable: the intonation/accent is definitely true. Walk like an egyptian, is really true, full immersion too. I also believe 3 months are a reasonable time for a B2 when those points are granted.
Then I admire, and envy, that he has time enough to go around the world and learn new languages for the sake of it.
As many 'X rules for Y' posts, the fundamental skills are not discussed.
People who already became somewhat fluent in a foreign language during childhood and have a work or hobby keeping them learning new things everyday won't need half of these 'rules'. Learning basic vocabulary and grammar will be enough as a starter to speak with people, read/watch things and progress very fast organicly, without any 'tricks'. I had friends learning Korean in 6 months by going straight through the alphabet and grammar system and then exclusively watching tv dramas and wikis and online forums;but they also learned japanese and english and german and can code in 4 computer languages at any time.
Someone who never cared about foreign language until 30, had very conservative jobs and hobbies when it came to learning new concepts (am I describing a solid third of the population of most countries) will have a very hard time to first relearn to learn, and develop the mind scafolding to handle multiple languages and systems, and the best approach to learning won't be the same at all.
I think Ferriss's beloved 80/20 rule applies to Ferriss himself: 80% of the value comes from 20% of his material. There is, to be sure, a lot of hyperbole, but once you filter out the dross what's left is gold.
Benny's American accent in Chinese is thick (the tones are often wrong on individual words), and his speech is halting, but even with the mistakes in grammar and vocabulary choice, I can understand him. (I am an American native speaker of English who has been learning Chinese as a second language since I was a teenager in the 1970s. My HN user profile discloses other languages I have studied over the years.) So, yeah, I guess he's doing not half badly. You won't fail to notice that Benny speaks MUCH more slowly than the native speaker of Chinese he "interviews," and after the prepared remarks he uses to open up the interview, and a few personal stories about himself, he hardly interacts with the native speaker of Chinese except to say "uh-huh." (You will also not fail to notice that the Chinese woman he is interviewing knows English, and presumably has spoken Chinese to other Americans with thick accents before.)
I think the rule of language learning in the blog post that has the most plausibility is "#8 – Embrace mistakes." (The interview subject basically says this to Benny in the interview, that he has a good habit of immediately using the language he learns, which he learns to use, and uses bravely.) I know an American man whose first visit to east Asia was simply to use up a one-way portion of an airplane ticket a friend gave him. He arrived in Taiwan in 1982 not knowing a word of Chinese, and having a thick south Boston (specifically Quincy, I think) accent that made his English sound strange to most Americans who met him. But he was very bold in striking up conversations with local people in Taiwan, and practiced his Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin) relentlessly, so he gradually outpaced a lot of more shy Americans in his actual communication proficiency. He eventually found work in a high-tech company operated mostly by Hong Kong Chinese people, and has had a very satisfying career working both in east Asia and on the west coast of the United States. I was DELIGHTED to remake acquaintance with him by LinkedIn a few years ago and to endorse his language ability. He earned it.
Of course Benny is promoting his new book, and here is a link to some press coverage generated by his publicity efforts:
Perhaps the statement in the article, "Lewis says: ‘The problem here, though, is that if you have such high criteria for fluency, then I have to confess, I’m not even fluent in English, my native language’" helps put his claims in context.
While we're on nationality, I have to say I find it hypocritical in the extreme that you wrote a long angry blog post about problems you have with Americans, which include overzealous marketing. And then you make ridiculous claims like "fluent in 3 months".
I saw your ChinesePod video after three months of study and it wasn't even remotely fluent. As tokenadult said, other than the intro it was slow and heavily accented.
In fact, I would go so far as to say the average college aged student I've met who has done an intensive program such as IUP in Beijing or ICLP in China not only has better reading skills, but also larger vocabulary, clearer accent and more fluid speech.
To clarify, I'm not saying you didn't manage to learn a good amount in three months. ICLP and IUP are top programs and very intense, and you're definitely ahead of the average university student who isn't in a great immersion program. Why the over-the-top claims? It's completely possible to make a successful language learning business without them. Just look at Steve "the linguist" Kaufman (a pretty good Chinese speaker, btw).
As the Chinese women pointed out, you have a good habit of boldly speaking the languages you are trying out. 「我覺得你有一個很好的習慣。 就是，你的目的是在用語言。你學一點以後，你馬上出去用和別人說話。而且，你很勇敢。」 (The transcription into Chinese characters from the soundtrack of the video is my own. The English translation was already provided as captions on the YouTube video, which I was listening to, but not watching, as I typed my first reply.) I had never heard you speak English in person and only in snatches of quoted speech while listening to the video, so I didn't place your English accent to a particular country among the countries you have visited in your world travels. I see now from looking at the linked videos that the Chinese woman in the interview has HUGE experience in speaking Chinese to foreigners with very little proficiency in Chinese, and has strong English of her own.
I'll comment for onlookers that according to Chinese social-science surveys, barely more than half the population of China is conversant in Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin), the official language of the country.[1] So Mandarin is a very "fault-tolerant" language, as many people who speak it in China are speaking it with other people with a poor command of the language.
I've met Ben (which doesn't say much since many people have met him), read his blog posts from time to time and seen his TedX talk [1].
Being fluent in a language that isn't mine, near-fluent in another language and intermediate in yet another, I could never buy his idea of "just speak it without needing to know anything yet." If it were plausible, many people would not be monolingual. Plus, any claims of fluency in less than one year, in-country, I also don't buy...not true fluency, anyways. Other than that, I've got nothing against him.
I feel like he's focusing too much on the speaking part and too little on listening. I can make myself understandable in Danish, German and Spanish but it is impossible for me to follow a conversation in any of them.
All languages divide into groups. It's always easier to learn foreign language of your group.
For example if you are an English speaker, you can start with German. Then look at Dutch. They have more or less same grammar rules.
After that if you've had enough zeal and curiosity, you can probably understand main rules of forming words, split unknown words into lexical units and morphemes.
That said you can move to the next level - French, Italian and Spanish. Italian and Spanish can be learnt simultaniously. It's hard, but as the languages have a lot in common, it will be interesting.
My native language is Russian. I can understand and speak Ukranian, Belorussian, Chech, Serbian. Just because they have a lot in common. And vice versa. But not always...
Well the only rule to succeed as already mentioned is to dive into language. People who move to other countries usually learn to speak foreign language within several months.
But as far as we live in Internet you can learn whatever you want without actually moving. Every day we read thousands of sentences and 10s thousands of words. You can read the same in the language you want to learn. Facebook, twitter, google, newsfeeds, search for the information you want in the language you want to know and read articles.
The more you read the more you learn and soon you'll be able to form your phrases. As soon as you can form phrases and understand what you read without searching every word in dictionary, you're ready to dive into grammar. Learn grammar as fast as possible now. That's the hardest and the most exhausting part of my method, but it is obligatory. Learn rules, draw tables with tenses, declension rules and so on. Find grammar exercises and do them all. Thus you train your brain to form phrases the right way, to spell the right way.
Next part is fun part - pronunciation. It's fun because in real life you sometimes can't understand your neighbour, and dialects divide your country to sort of "language provinces". In russian language there's no English sound "th". It transformed to 'f'(Theodor - Федор) and 't' (thriller - триллер). So placing tongue between teeth is a hard but funny part for newbies. It's also funny to learn to pronounce 'r' in German, English and French. You will learn a lot about your tongue and jaw.
Last part is a "separate thread" part because learning new words is a constant process. Sometimes it's also a funny part. For example in chech the word hallway(chodba) is pronounced exactly like russian word ходьба (walking) and german 'Herr' (Mr.) is pronounced like russian 'penis', so "Herr Ivanov, sitzen Sie bitte" sounds funny. And spanish 'huesos' (bones) is the transliteration of 'хуесос' (dicksucker). Apart from that there are a lot of words common for all european languages.
That's what I do. It's a slow and silent method for learning foreign language on your own. It's like progressive jpeg. The harder you work the better the result. But every next language is learnt faster than previous.
I spent eight months studying French for a few hours every Saturday morning in a class and a few hours a week doing homework, I felt like I was making good progress in the class but without actually being able to usefully speak French. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had a language learning experience like this.
The thing is - I could (kind of) use two past tenses and one future tense while still stumbling over basic introductions and asking for directions. This doesn't make any sense from a utility point of view.
So I hired a succession of French teachers on Skype to have the same basic conversations with - the kind of basic transactional or quick introduction "speed dating" type conversations that I'd actually be likely to have with native speakers on a frequent basis. Surprise, surprise, my French abilities got better by leaps and bounds. It cost less than I was paying for the classes as well.
I now think that organised group classes are a waste of money for adult learners. I can find native language French teachers that do classes on Skype for less than £10 / hour, which is about the price of group classes with 6-10 people in them. Spending an hour which is 45 mins me talking and 15 minutes of corrections has done more for my spoken French than an hour of group classes where I actually have maybe 5 minutes cumulatively to speak.
Yeah, sometimes it is a little boring spending an hour having conversations about hotel bookings and flight reservations, but I can actually do those things pretty confidently after practicing them for two hours.