the apple is red etc. .I read Benny's book right after that and sought to recreate his immersion/language missions, even making my iPhone Spanish. Learning this alphabet and knowing it well helped me so much while in Japan. WebI want to give it to her. whats trending on Youtube in that country right now. Id recommend watch 1 to be in the target language, watch 2 to be in your mother tongue and watch 3 to be in the target language again. Duolingo, which is great fun and seems to work despite breaking every principle of language pedagogy, particularly the one of making target language meaningful. S.M.A.R.T. Yes, keep working hard!! When I came from Russia to the US 10 years ago, I could speak English perfectly but when people would talk back to me, I had no idea what they were saying. Also, you can make the time. I went from zero to teaching high school physics in Spanish in two months, while living in Bolivia and Peru. An excellent post. The most common I give up misconception is:Im too old to become fluent. Oh well, such a great problem to have. Thanks for the confidence boost and great resources! Tim Ferriss wasn't always Tim Ferriss. You can even reference Google Translate or a dictionary for that language while you chat, so you can learn new words as you go, when you need them. Yes, provided that. Tip #2: As my father used to say, use it or lose it. I would be really surprised if he, a) came up with it himself, and b) ever actually used it to "deconstruct a language" himself. It inspired and motivated me to (try to) learn Spanish before were heading off to South America later this year. To see for yourself how the process works, check out the second half of this post with Soundcloud samples. At the B2 stage you can really have fun in the language! Great backing up of facts as well. Its awesome to learn that someone else who thought they sucked at language and thought they just didnt have the talent for them is more multilingual. Free resources and memory tricks? So maybe it is helpful with simpler languages.). I have a Masters in linguistics and second language acquisition and have read a lot about the effects of age on language acquisition, either L1 or L2 or L3etc. Google and Bing translate are good enough at translating text that you can use them for most things, Hi. Thanks so much for buying my book! This effectively means that you have social equivalency with your native language, which means that you can live in your target language insocial situations in much the same way that you would in your native language, such as casual chats with friends in a bar, asking what people did over the weekend, sharing your aspirations and relating to people. Loved the skype me maybe video. I am going to Oktoberfest in Munch this year so that should give me a good goal to aim for in being able to hold a conversation in German using this guide! I was picked up by a truck, the driver spoke only Polish. It wouldnt surprise me, though, if the research showed that adults are better at learning languages the way that adults ordinarily go about acquiring a second language. We learnt using textbooks written during the Cultural Revolution, with the result that the only sentences that stuck in my head were things like We all do physical training very early, We all study Mao Zedong thought, and We all work hard and love the commune. Pretty much every sentence started Women duo . Tim Ferriss wasn't always Tim Ferriss. I should know; I knew him before he became widely known as an author, entrepreneur, investor, speaker, and podcaster extraordinaire. Years ago, Elance asked me to interview Ferriss for its blog a month or two prior to the release of The 4-Hour Workweek. WebHello, I am looking to learn German. Perhaps I should have chosen Spanish. Benny is one of the many language learners that consistently wow me as well. Its a really good look into how we learn, and how to teach preposition, using cognitive linguistics. He grew up in Long Island. Please share in the comments! Han ger det till John. Then again enabling subtitles did help because European Spanish can be quite fast for beginner learners and it helped me see the words I was hearing. This might seem like a wet blanket statement, but it didnt work for me. For each language there are the translations and audio recordings of the 12 Sentences by a teacher and native speaker of the language. I find reading Chinese even harder than Japanese, as they do not have hiragana to identify where words end. After reading a lot of books and blogs and watching people's vlogs and lectures, I have come to the conclusion that everyone has to try all the techniques until they find what works for them. Ive also made time while standing in lines or waiting for people or on public transport, to squeeze in more language studying. At least, thats what most people believe. One way that many people here in Romania learned the English language was from TV. Thats how were gonna 2002-2023 Benny, awesome post! We tend to have New Years Resolutions along the lines of Learn Spanish, but how do you know when youve succeeded? What I like the most about Benny is that he is so genuine in his approach. Also, keep in mind that while the tips in this article are an excellent place to start, there is a huge community of polyglots online willing to offer you their own encouragement as well. Thanks for the inspiration. Glad you enjoyed it! I just started using Talking Glass, a video language exchange website. Aiming for a solid C1 in two or three languages or going for more languages while aiming a bit lower at B2? I have a friend learning Cantonese right now. Every single person for the rest of my time in Egypt would start speaking to me in Arabic, including in touristy parts of town where they spoke excellent English and would be well used to spotting tourists. WebMemrise is more focused on increasing your vocabulary, so has very little on grammar and sentence structure. http://lingohut.com/ is my personal project, if your native language is not English click on the I speak English button to find your native language. A lot of research has also been done in acquisition in low exposure environments, say 2 hours or less per week, and older children and adults do outperform younger children. They dont require correction or any instruction. Thank you so much for all the great materials that you put on your blog! Great post Benny! So I get the idea. This post is fantastic. Cuidate, Thank you, this is great. My younger sister lost much of her French, just because she doesnt use it. What decades of peer reviewed research are you referring to? You cant study in isolation until you are vaguely ready for interaction. Not aware of research that makes this concrete however. They do not need to compare the new grammar vs the old grammar. I hope you keep on discovering new languages and having fun! After lots of exercises to tidy up my mistakes at the B1 level, I find that I can break into B2. One thing Benny left out, is the website http://www.lingq.com which is designed to quickly build up your vocabulary and reading/listening skills. you can read a very very in depth review on his website , http://www.fluentin3months.com/lingq-review/. - Could they be made better?In the Mindkraft session, we did several experiments on these sentences and worked with (or as) native speakers of other languages to see exactly where the holes might be in using these as tools to peer into a new language. And saying that adults are actually BETTER than children at learning language is like saying that adults are better than children at going through puberty, or children are better at going through menopause. BIG THANK YOU TIM AND BENNY . I am all for people of any age, older or younger, getting encouragement in a language but falsifying facts really irks me, especially when its done just to sell something. WebSentences are from the user-curated database Tatoeba and not all of them are written and checked by native speakers. But theres no point telling people things that arent true and encouraging wishful thinking and unrealistic expectations for the sake of making them feel good or to help him sell his books. Dont worry about upsetting native speakers for being so bold as to speak to them in their own language. Ive retained all my French, but I used it daily, and I force myself to use it too. There are so many straightforward compound words like perfume hajuvesi (smell water) that you can often guess a new word by just making it up. I really enjoyed your article. For each language Great article. And when I did, I started to learn. Tim Ferriss ha entrevistado a personajes de todo tipo y aqu, en su ltimo libro, destila y prueba las ideas clave y consejos de estos atletas de lite, aventureros, empresarios y ejecutivos, pensadores creativos, investigadores y un largo etctera, para ayudar a los lectores a aprender a ser ms ricos, sabios y estar ms sanos. The nice thing is, you really dont need any background in the language at all, so you could start doing this immediately. The main page of lingq espouses: Learn like a child. Jai regard votre vido sur la diffrence entre le franais de France et le franais du Canada. I am one of those people who struggle with language, and just assume I suck at it, but I love this article because it has so many ways to learn and is a total confidence booster. Also, Benny, Tim what do you think about InnovativeLanguages tools, like Chinese101, ThaiPod101 and others? What is much more important, but often overlooked, is intonationthe pitch, rise, fall, and stress of your words. Second Language Research 14. Loved this post and will certainly come back to it several times. the conversation is slow, i.e. Accent is obvious; if you cant roll your R in Spanish you will be recognized as a foreigner instantly. This definitive guest post by Benny will teach you: It contains TONS of amazing resources I never even knew existed, including the best free apps and websites for becoming fluent in record time. Yeah, I always felt that the "12 sentence" bit by Ferris is the weirdest bit of hokum on the language scene. This can just at the right time as I am going to learn Hungarian in the very near future My wife is Hungarian and soon our new born girl will be speaking it too and I dont want to get left out! What these experiments prove is that adults are more intelligent, not better language learners. This very detailed post should give you everything you need to know. HelloTalk has tools for translation, pronunciation, transliteration, and corrections which help conversations run smoothly. Imitation is, after all, the most sincere form of flattery! The problem is that you cant ever truly learn a language, you get used to it. A wonderful and completely free course that keeps getting better is DuoLingo which I highly recommend for its selection of European languages currently on offer, with more on the way. But its not too late for us! Its pure nonsense and is the exact opposite to what the research literature tells us. 3) I give John the apple. It very obviously is.