How I learned to speak fluent Italian while working a 63-hour per week job

February 28, 2012 | 16 comments | Category: particular languages, travel

One misunderstanding people have when they arrive on my site is that they apparently need to have precisely my (current) circumstances to learn a language – and every day I receive comments from people with their laundry list of reasons why it’s not possible for them, including that they are too old, languages just aren’t their thing, and of course that they can’t travel.

Language learning at a distance is very easy and I’ve discussed many times before how I have done it over the years, so you absolutely do not need to be in the country to do it effectively.

I’ll actually come back to the topic very soon again, because this week I’m shifting my more formal Chinese learning lessons to be mostly online so that the majority of my outside interactions are truly naturally social, and it’s been so easy to find good online teachers (I’m currently reviewing several sites to find the teachers and will let you know which ones I’d recommend using).

However, today I want to focus on one of the biggest reasons I tend to hear from people: that they can’t learn a language because they work full time. Read the Rest!

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How Video Diaries Brought Me to Conversational Fluency in Spanish

February 23, 2012 | 7 comments | Category: guest post

Will on the left with some CouchSurfing pals getting ready for a video

Today’s guest post is from Will Peach, an Englishman journeying around Spain, keeping regular video diaries to make himself accountable for learning the language. Will found my blog shortly before beginning his adventure and continues to apply my tips in the hope that he will reach his defined level of fluency before September of this year.

Will has his own site My Spanish Adventure, where he continues to chronicle his progress learning Spanish and hopes to encourage others to do the same. His travels and language studies are sponsored by the gap year travel site GapDaemon.com, where he formerly worked as an editor.

September 2011 was when it all happened. When I finally made the decision to drag my carcass out of its monolingual mould and ram it, kicking and screaming, into the scary world of Spanish fluency. Severing my ties with London, my 9-5, my friends, even my girlfriend, I headed out to Spain with only one intention.

“Get fluent in Spanish or die trying”.

Easier said than done right? Well as an avid reader of Fluent In 3 Months, I can appreciate just as much as the next reader just how loose of a goal that is. Benny’s been telling us all from the very start just how crucial it is to carefully define our own language learning goals and our own definition of fluency. Telling myself to simply “get fluent”? I knew that wouldn’t cut it. Read the Rest!

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Are you problem minded or solution minded? My 1.5 month level of Chinese [video]

February 20, 2012 | 90 comments | Category: mission, positive mentality

Since we are at exactly the half-way point of my three month mission to speak fluent Chinese, it’s time for another video update! This time, it is 100% unprepared, unscripted, and unrehearsed Check it out:

[Subtitles in traditional & simplified Chinese, as well as in English; enable Youtube's closed captioning to see - mistakes are maintained and equivalent mistakes are given in English translation to convey what I'm saying sounds like. Watch this video on Youku if Youtube is blocked for you]

One thing that I’ve talked about in SFD1+LHG as well as the TEDx talk is that I like to make “at least 100 mistakes a day” when speaking a language, because that means I’m really using it. Generally, I make way more than that though – especially since I recently decided to start speaking Mandarin for three hours straight a day, to give my progress the boost it needed.

Because of this, I’ve made tremendous progress in the last two weeks (since the last video) in things that are very hard to measure, like my comfort in listening to others speak and distinguish their words, the speed at which I do that, and my ability to participate in real conversations. This has taken me up to a whole new level and I have made some real friends, entirely through Mandarin! Read the Rest!

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Why impatience is a virtue and taking your time is wasting your time

February 16, 2012 | 31 comments | Category: learning languages

It’s about time I discuss one of the biggest questions I get asked by readers: What’s the rush?

Not just about my time-restricted objective, but in general – why try to learn a language so fast? Shouldn’t you take a few years to absorb it?

I’ve discussed before that my 3-month deadline is not some promise or claim, but it’s a target I aim for based on my lifestyle. I’m a traveller and tourist visa limits tend to be 3 months long. So this basically explains why, and if I have to leave the country anyway then no amount of you saying “take your time” makes much sense to me; I might as well speak the language as best as I possibly can given my time limit, as that will allow me to interact way more with the locals and have some amazing experiences with them that would have otherwise been impossible.

It’s like a foodie telling you to take your time eating your dinner even though the restaurant is about to close and you’ll get kicked out. You may as well gobble up everything since it’s good food that you’ve paid for. The doors are going to close and no amount of arguments that “savouring every bite is so wonderful” actually matters. Eat more so you’ll be less hungry. Simple as that.

But there’s another reason that I want to get into today, which is another huge motivator for me having such tight deadlines even in cases where visas are not an issue (such as when I’m in EU countries, and technically if I dealt with a bit of bureaucracy I could get around the visa issue in some countries easily enough), and that’s quite simply: I am not interested in wasting time. I’m impatient, and I see that as a good thing because it ultimately leads to much better results.

What can you do right now is what matters, not “some day”

Intentionally slow learners are obsessed with the long term and can’t do jack in the short term because of it. I prioritise the short term, and all benefits I reap will also help me in the long term (as long as I keep up the language, which I will be doing in Chinese).

A long-sighted learner is only interested in one thing: they want to be equivalent to a native. Three months or any other short period where you set yourself an ambitious goal is clearly not enough to reach native level, so they have this idea that anything else is not good enough.

Well this attitude is not good enough. It’s wasteful and impractical. Read the Rest!

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When disliking learning languages can be a really good thing

February 14, 2012 | 35 comments | Category: learning languages

It may seem like the last thing you’d expect to read on a blog that discusses language learning so much, but I don’t actually like learning languages.

It’s quite an oddity in language learning circles, because if you talk to linguists and read many other language learning blogs and forums, you can feel their passion about this learning process flow out of them. I’ve had some very interesting dialogues with and learned a lot from some of the more open minded among them.

Sadly, some others see what I’m doing (attempting to speak a language as quickly as humanly possible) as an insult. If you are passionate about languages themselves, or if you’ve personally taken your time to get where you were, you’d say that language learning should be savoured and enjoyed. Of course when you enjoy the learning process itself, someone who dislikes spending time on that is going to have a lot to say that you’ll disagree with.

But we really are talking about very different things.

Read the Rest!

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Benny’s 1 month level of Mandarin: Lantern festival interviews!

February 9, 2012 | 49 comments | Category: culture, mission

[Make sure to enable captions in either English or original traditional Chinese. If Youtube is blocked for you, you can watch the video on Youku]

Here it is! My one month point in my 3-month Mandarin mission, shared on video!

The first few seconds are me reading a prepared text off camera to practice speaking a little quicker, and then the rest of the video is saying some things that I ran by my (native) cameraman just before saying it to make sure I was pronouncing everything correctly. This is very different to the several days of preparation that went into for the first video!! And it’s way more interesting

Useful feedback appreciated – as you can hear, based on changes in my strategy for the last two weeks, I am saying words separately rather than syllables separately. I still speak slowly when doing it without reading, but it’s manageable enough for natives to understand me fine. Read the Rest!

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Progress report: Thoughts on one month of learning Mandarin & some FAQs

February 8, 2012 | 29 comments | Category: mission

It’s been one month (and a couple of days) since I got into Taipei with the objective to speak fluent Mandarin in 3 months. So it’s about time I gave you a status report on my progress, before I share my next Mandarin video with you on Friday tomorrow! (This photo is a teaser for that fun video!)

Since uploading the first video, I’ve gotten some great feedback (as well as some not-so-great feedback), and taking them and my own awareness of my biggest issues into account, I have changed my strategy quite a bit. It’s important to note that I am always working to improve my current level - so a typical day for me in my first week, my fifth week and my eleventh week will each be completely different!

There isn’t one way and one strategy to learn a language, but you must adapt to your needs, environment and abilities.

Toning down on tones

As you can see from that video, I was focusing a huge amount on attempting to get my tones as correct as I could, and this required serious mental power as I said each syllable. This was based on the advice from a lot of people that I should focus on tones as much as possible in the beginning. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword, because all that energy on tones meant that I had no flow at all in the language.

So, my approach since then has been to learn words as best as I can, always attempting to get the tone right, but speaking quicker and sacrificing perhaps a few syllables to incorrect tones because of this. Read the Rest!

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How many words do you need to speak a language fluently?

February 6, 2012 | 37 comments | Category: learning languages

Sometimes on this blog, I like to ask really stupid questions (or make stupid statements) in the post title, and then explain how idiotic I think the question is in the first place within the actual post, and explain an alternative way of looking at it. This is one of those times!

I’ve been getting asked this and similar questions a lot lately: how many words do you need, before you speak a language “fluently”?

It’s hard for me to easily convey how idiotic I find this question, so let me attempt to do it with an analogy:

It’s like asking a composer “How many notes do you need exactly, before you have a musical masterpiece?”

How do you think a composer would answer such a question, apart from rolling his eyes and thinking “you really don’t get it, do you?”

It’s not about the number of words you know, it’s the quality of amount of words that you will be using. Read the Rest!

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