I just finished reading a fascinating and concise report from the U.S. Department of State’s FSI (Foreign Service Institute) entitled “Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice in government language teaching” that distills what FSI believe are the ten most important lessons learned from having spent the past fifty years teaching diplomats and spies foreign languages to a high level of proficiency, within six to twelve months, where those individuals were starting as complete beginners in the language they had to learn.  I will explain what FSI is and why you should listen to them, I will give you a short summary of the report by telling you what the 10 lessons are (one sentence each), and then I will embed the report below so that you can either read it right here on this page or download it (PDF file) to read later as you please.

For those not familiar, FSI is held in very high regard in the language-learning and linguistics communities, they pioneered many different areas of language learning and a lot of the most successful techniques and courses in use are mostly if not entirely derived from FSI material and techniques.  What is FSI and what does it do? FSI is the branch of the U.S. State Department which is responsible for teaching foreign languages to all State Department personnel and many personnel from other government agencies and the military.  It is the training arm of the Foreign Service and as such runs other courses and classes such as management, diplomacy, culture, etc. but its largest department by far is its School of Language Studies, for which it is also best known.

The reason FSI is held in such high regard is quite simply the standards that they are held to due to the people that they are responsible for teaching: FSI trains our diplomats, military interpreters and intelligence analysts, CIA officers, and some federal law enforcement personnel, and they have a very strict schedule within which they must operate and accomplish some fairly difficult feats.  For example, from the text:

Our programs are not given a lengthy period in which to prepare learners to do their work. For example, students in the Russian program are expected to progress in ten months of intensive training from no functional ability in the language to the ability to read almost any professionally relevant text and discuss in detail with a Russian speaker any and all implications of that text for Russian-American relations. Ten months of intensive language study may seem like a long time, but, in fact, it is very short when the scope of the goal is considered. There is no time to waste with nonproductive activities.

Additionally:

The accountability goes far beyond test scores and end-of-training student evaluations. It goes to whether graduates of our programs can use the language to carry out the important and complex work for which they are responsible. If their language limitations cause them not to be able to do that work, the FSI program heads will hear about it in no uncertain terms. Language educators at FSI get direct evaluative feedback from our clients and stakeholders. When a dissatisfied cable comes to us from post, it receives our immediate attention.

Whatever it is that they’re doing, it has to work, there is no way that it couldn’t–if it didn’t work, and work well, then most of our diplomats (among many other people FSI is responsible for training) wouldn’t be proficient in the language of the country that they’re stationed in, and to say that this would cause problems would be putting it mildly.  I’m not saying they’re the absolute best, I’m saying that you can be guaranteed that what they do does work and that they do know what they’re talking about–as far as the credibility of a source goes when it comes to language learning, it doesn’t get much better than this.  That’s my point.  I guess all I’m trying to do here is convince you that yes, it really is worth taking 30 minutes out of your day to read this report if you’re at all interested in language-learning.

The Top 10 Most Valuable Things Learned by FSI Over the Past 50 Years

This is just a very short summary if you simply don’t have time or want to get an idea of what it’s about before bothering with it, the actual report is below, 17 pages long, each of the following lessons are expanded on in that report with several paragraphs each, and it is absolutely worth reading in full so I highly recommend you do that.  Here’s a very quick summary of their Top 10 Lessons, skip this if you’d just like to go straight to the report:

Lesson 1. Mature adults can learn a foreign language well enough through intensive language study to do things in the language (almost) as well as native speakers.

Lesson 2. “Language-learning aptitude” varies among individuals and affects their classroom learning success (but at least some aspects of aptitude can be learned).

Lesson 3. There is no “one right way” to teach (or learn) languages, nor is there a single “right” syllabus.

Lesson 4. Time on task and the intensity of the learning experience appear crucial.

Lesson 5. Learners’ existing knowledge about language affects their learning.

Lesson 6. A learner’s prior experience with learning (languages or other skills) also affects classroom learning.

Lesson 7. The importance of “automaticity” in building learner skill and confidence in speaking and reading a language is more important than has been recognized by the SLA [Second Language Acquisition] field over the last two decades.

Lesson 8. Learners may not learn a linguistic form until they are “ready,” but FSI’s experience indicates that teachers and a well designed course can help learners become ready earlier.

Lesson 9. A supportive, collaborative, responsive learning environment, with a rich variety of authentic and teacher-made resources, is very important in fostering effective learning.

Lesson 10. Conversation, which on the surface appears to be one of the most basic forms of communication, is actually one of the hardest to master.

The Report

I’ve embedded it below so that you should be able to read it right here on the page if you like, or you can just download the PDF file and read it on your computer, here’s a direct link to the file if you’d like to download it, and here’s the embedded version (click the magnifying glass to make it larger or click the arrow in the upper right hand corner to open it in a new tab or window with Google Docs):

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

I run a newsletter entirely about how to learn Spanish online for free where I send out every cool new tip and technique that I learn to my subscribers and not only do they get it before anyone else but frequently they get things that no one else ever does. Additionally, I've spent a great deal of time putting together a 3-part series of articles for you on the internet's best free resources for the Spanish-learner that you'll get when you sign up for my newsletter--in addition to all of what you get below, I'll be sure to send you any updates about cool new sites, resources, and learning tips and techniques that I come up with:

Part 1: An article called “Spanish Learning Systems: Should you bother?” about whether or not you should even bother with a pre-packaged Spanish-learning system (e.g. Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur) and, if you do decide you want to, where you can go online to find programs that are literally 1/10th the price of older, more common systems like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur but actually work even better. Also, at the same time, you’ll get a separate e-mail with a very long list of my favorite Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources (tools, references, sites with free lessons, articles, blogs, forums, etc.) that's far to long to include here, especially with all the other stuff I've got below that's just on this site alone, and I'd like to offer it to you (completely free, you don't have to do anything other than sign up) right now.

Part 2: I explain what language exchanges are (essentially they allow you free access to an unlimited number of native speakers to practice your Spanish with), why they're absolutely essential if you're teaching yourself (I'm serious when I say this: it's impossible to get fluent without them if you're learning a foreign language on your own), how to use them, and which ones are the best.

Part 3: I cover chat rooms which are specifically devoted to connecting you with native Spanish speakers who want to learn English so you can chat with them in Spanish (and they'll help and correct you) and then you do the same for them with their English (these are completely free to use, but rather hard to find, but I'll tell you where the best ones are!). Sign up below!



Also, if you like what you see here PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to my Twitter feed and/or RSS feed so you can be updated any time there’s a new post.

Cheers,

Andrew

Related Posts:

• The Awesome Language-Learning Resource that is Children’s Books
• Friday Linkfest: Cool Language-Learning Links of the Previous Week of 3/20/11
• Friday Linkfest: Cool Language-Learning Links of the Previous Week of 3/13/11

I want to quickly tell you guys about a fantastic resource that’s available to you and is especially good for beginners and even those at an intermediate level: children’s books.  They’re fun to read (how could you dislike a story about a talking worm, or three little bears that live in the woods?), and they use very simple grammar and syntax and common, basic vocabulary.  They’re perfect for learning a new language.

Not only can you go down to your local public library and borrow a few (depending on how big it is, this may not be possible or their selection may be very limited) but you can also find tons and tons of them online, many for free (yes, I’m about to show you where!).

The International Children’s Digital Library

Just go to the Spanish section of The International Children’s Digital Library, and you’ll find that there are currently 168 books in the Spanish section, all of which you can read right there on their website for free (just click on the book you want, and then click on the link on the left where it says “Read This Book”)!  Awesome, right? And, for those of you learning other languages, please note the drop-down menu on the above-linked-to-page where you can choose from dozens of other languages as well!

Amazon

Amazon has got a fairly wide selection of children’s books in other languages, including Spanish.  In fact, they’ve got an entire foreign-language section within their Children’s Books section, with the Spanish one (here) being, by far, the largest with 476 books currently listed.

If you’ve been putting off reading Spanish because you think you’re just not advanced enough yet and you’ve tried reading maybe some Spanish blog posts or newspaper stories and could barely understand anything, well guess what? You’re fresh out of excuses now, aren’t you?

I can’t emphasize enough what a fantastic method this is, you really ought to try it, it’s fun, you learn tons of the language, and you’re learning all the right stuff that you need to learn as a beginner: the basic, common things that even children are expected to know.  Isn’t that the sort of stuff that you’d want to learn first and foremost anyway?

Please, please, please: if you have any other similar resources or sites you know of where we can read or download children’s books in foreign languages, post them in the comments and I’ll edit them into this post and give you credit, we’re all about helping each other learn here.  And let me know what you think, as always.

Cheers,

Andrew

Edit: Turkish

Aaron from Everyday Language Learner came up with a link to a fantastic site in Turkish where you can actually “watch” a children’s book, so to speak: it shows you the pages while a native speaker reads to you, very cool.  Thanks, Aaron.

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

I run a newsletter entirely about how to learn Spanish online for free where I send out every cool new tip and technique that I learn to my subscribers and not only do they get it before anyone else but frequently they get things that no one else ever does. Additionally, I've spent a great deal of time putting together a 3-part series of articles for you on the internet's best free resources for the Spanish-learner that you'll get when you sign up for my newsletter--in addition to all of what you get below, I'll be sure to send you any updates about cool new sites, resources, and learning tips and techniques that I come up with:

Part 1: An article called “Spanish Learning Systems: Should you bother?” about whether or not you should even bother with a pre-packaged Spanish-learning system (e.g. Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur) and, if you do decide you want to, where you can go online to find programs that are literally 1/10th the price of older, more common systems like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur but actually work even better. Also, at the same time, you’ll get a separate e-mail with a very long list of my favorite Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources (tools, references, sites with free lessons, articles, blogs, forums, etc.) that's far to long to include here, especially with all the other stuff I've got below that's just on this site alone, and I'd like to offer it to you (completely free, you don't have to do anything other than sign up) right now.

Part 2: I explain what language exchanges are (essentially they allow you free access to an unlimited number of native speakers to practice your Spanish with), why they're absolutely essential if you're teaching yourself (I'm serious when I say this: it's impossible to get fluent without them if you're learning a foreign language on your own), how to use them, and which ones are the best.

Part 3: I cover chat rooms which are specifically devoted to connecting you with native Spanish speakers who want to learn English so you can chat with them in Spanish (and they'll help and correct you) and then you do the same for them with their English (these are completely free to use, but rather hard to find, but I'll tell you where the best ones are!). Sign up below!



Also, if you like what you see here PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to my Twitter feed and/or RSS feed so you can be updated any time there’s a new post.

Cheers,

Andrew

Related Posts:

• Fascinating Report from the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute: “Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice in government language teaching”
• Friday Linkfest: Cool Language-Learning Links of the Previous Week of 3/20/11
• Friday Linkfest: Cool Language-Learning Links of the Previous Week of 3/13/11

It’s back!  Friday Linkfest actually got a bit of attention the last time I did it, and I think it’s an excellent idea because, as I stated before, it gives you, the reader, a short little list of interesting language-learning stuff to look at that you may not have seen plus linking out to them acknowledges and rewards people who put good stuff out there and really ought to get credit for it.  Let’s see what we’ve got for this week…

Aidan addresses the ever-popular topic among language-nerds of The Easiest Language and his perspective is, honestly, the closest to mine that I’ve read yet.  Motivation does matter, but pretending that there’s no difference between languages in terms of difficulty is simply naively denying what reality actually is.  Difficulty depends, more than anything, on what your native language is and what languages you already know–Icelandic is generally considered one of the hardest languages in the world, but being a Nordic language it almost certainly would be far easier for a native speaker of Norwegian or Swedish than it would be for anyone else.

Simon over at Omniglot tells us the story of Humboldt’s Parrot, a parrot that belonged to a recently slaughtered Amazonian tribe, the Maypure, and whose language would have been completely lost had it not been for the fact that their parrots learned a large portion of their language and those parrots were subsequently acquired by one Alexander von Humboldt who then did his best to transcribe the Maypure language based on what the parrots said.  Very cool

Vincent does a great job of showing us how easy and fun it can be to learn a language and find native speakers of it, especially in a large city, by describing the Spanish and Mandarin-speaking communities in Philadelphia.

Steve addresses a very common problem (among many) with language teaching as it’s normally done in schools in the United States, specifically that the teachers tend to be far too controlling of how their students learn, the material they’re allowed to learn from and are exposed to, etc.  I’ve honestly never had a positive experience with any language class I’ve taken, so I’m not surprised to hear that this sort of attitude is common.

And Randy makes it on the list two weeks in a row by nailing a personal pet peeve of mine, namely the myth that children have some sort of strangely magical ability to acquire languages that gives them an immense advantage over adults but really only gives adults a bullshit excuse to use for being lazy and not learning a language properly.

Now, I’m actually going to send you to a blog post from several years ago because it’s one that I think every language-learner should read and I’ve referred people to it so many times I’ve lost count.  It’s by Tim Ferriss and is about how he learned Japanese in 3 months in Japan simply by indulging his passion in Judo.  It’s a fantastic read that I cannot recommend highly enough.  Any blogger out there that writes something about how to learn a language by involving it in something that you already like or are passionate about like a hobby should read this first and be sure to refer to it in their post (I’ve read about a dozen such posts, by the way, seems as though everyone comes up with that one and, worse, thinks they’re the first one to ever think of it).

That’s it, I hope you found something interesting here and if you’ve got any additional suggestions please please please put them in the comments, anything at all interesting you’ve come across recently you’d like to share that you think someone might find useful is more than welcome!

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

I run a newsletter entirely about how to learn Spanish online for free where I send out every cool new tip and technique that I learn to my subscribers and not only do they get it before anyone else but frequently they get things that no one else ever does. Additionally, I've spent a great deal of time putting together a 3-part series of articles for you on the internet's best free resources for the Spanish-learner that you'll get when you sign up for my newsletter--in addition to all of what you get below, I'll be sure to send you any updates about cool new sites, resources, and learning tips and techniques that I come up with:

Part 1: An article called “Spanish Learning Systems: Should you bother?” about whether or not you should even bother with a pre-packaged Spanish-learning system (e.g. Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur) and, if you do decide you want to, where you can go online to find programs that are literally 1/10th the price of older, more common systems like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur but actually work even better. Also, at the same time, you’ll get a separate e-mail with a very long list of my favorite Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources (tools, references, sites with free lessons, articles, blogs, forums, etc.) that's far to long to include here, especially with all the other stuff I've got below that's just on this site alone, and I'd like to offer it to you (completely free, you don't have to do anything other than sign up) right now.

Part 2: I explain what language exchanges are (essentially they allow you free access to an unlimited number of native speakers to practice your Spanish with), why they're absolutely essential if you're teaching yourself (I'm serious when I say this: it's impossible to get fluent without them if you're learning a foreign language on your own), how to use them, and which ones are the best.

Part 3: I cover chat rooms which are specifically devoted to connecting you with native Spanish speakers who want to learn English so you can chat with them in Spanish (and they'll help and correct you) and then you do the same for them with their English (these are completely free to use, but rather hard to find, but I'll tell you where the best ones are!). Sign up below!



Also, if you like what you see here PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to my Twitter feed and/or RSS feed so you can be updated any time there’s a new post.

Cheers,

Andrew

Related Posts:

• Friday Linkfest: Cool Language-Learning Links of the Previous Week of 3/13/11
• Fascinating Report from the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute: “Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice in government language teaching”
• The Awesome Language-Learning Resource that is Children’s Books

This is something new I’m going to start doing if for no other reason than to make myself start posting more frequently and consistently, plus I read all sorts of cool language-learning related articles every day on the dozen or so blogs I’m subscribed to, plus people I follow on Twitter are always posting interesting stuff on there, and I really ought to share them with my readers who may or may not have seen them plus linking out to them acknowledges and rewards people who put good stuff out there and really ought to get credit for it.

Benny teaches us about St. Paddy’s day and the Irish language – St. Patrick’s claim to fame in Ireland was bringing Christianity to the Irish when so many others had tried and failed.  Know why he succeeded? Because he spoke to them in their own language when every other preacher before him talked at them in Latin.  Pretty cool, huh?

Jennie teaches us how to curse in French, and explains the French confusion with certain words being bleeped out on American and British television, which I particularly liked because I, like the French, find that sort of behavior to be shamefully stupid, I hate that we’re still so prudish and backwards even in this day and age.

Pete explains the subtleties of learning a language, how implicit learning works, and why you can really only learn by doing.  This is something Benny has talked about repeatedly and is why he emphasizes speaking so much: you can’t learn how to speak a language by any means other than speaking it.  What makes this post special is that Pete actually goes into detail explaining precisely why this is the case and how it works.

Aaron talks about putting in the time necessary to learn a language and how Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule in his book Outliers applies just as much to truly mastering a language as everything else.  I’ve talked before about how important motivation is, and the reason it’s so important is because it’s necessary to succeed in a language because of the amount of time and hard work you have to put in: my favorite way of phrasing it is to say “You have to be consistently persistent.”, and that applies to succeeding in anything, not just learning a language.  By the way, if haven’t read Gladwell’s book, I highly recommend you do so (Amazon link), it’s excellent.

Randy learned Polish in 8 days…well, not really, but what he did do is demonstrate just how much you can learn in such a short period of time and how fantastically effective and important it is to just dive right in and go!  Eight days of plowing through a book on basic Polish got him to the point where he was chatting (not well, but he was speaking and they could understand him!) with native speakers.  Also, he talks about how understand the basic grammar to some degree was helpful, and I’m actually not surprised, I’m not quite on the side of some my fellow language nerds who insist that learning formal grammar to any degree is useless, though I would definitely say that you shouldn’t be emphasizing it, you should be emphasizing actually speaking with people.

And Cracked (yeah, I know, but they’re generally funny and not too horribly inaccurate) tells us about the 5 stupidest ways that movies deal with foreign languages.  The bit about Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October is dead on, it sounded like a Scotsman making a very poor attempt to imitate a Russian accent, which is because that’s precisely what it was.

And a new study has come out showing that speaking a second language can delay the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s by 5 years.  If you don’t use it, you lose it, I’m not surprised to hear about this.

That’s all I could come up with for now, this was kind of an impromptu thing that I thought was a good idea and would provide some value to my readers, so if you like it let me know, and if you’ve got anything else you think should’ve been included or is just interesting, don’t be afraid to post it in the comments.

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

I run a newsletter entirely about how to learn Spanish online for free where I send out every cool new tip and technique that I learn to my subscribers and not only do they get it before anyone else but frequently they get things that no one else ever does. Additionally, I've spent a great deal of time putting together a 3-part series of articles for you on the internet's best free resources for the Spanish-learner that you'll get when you sign up for my newsletter--in addition to all of what you get below, I'll be sure to send you any updates about cool new sites, resources, and learning tips and techniques that I come up with:

Part 1: An article called “Spanish Learning Systems: Should you bother?” about whether or not you should even bother with a pre-packaged Spanish-learning system (e.g. Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur) and, if you do decide you want to, where you can go online to find programs that are literally 1/10th the price of older, more common systems like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur but actually work even better. Also, at the same time, you’ll get a separate e-mail with a very long list of my favorite Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources (tools, references, sites with free lessons, articles, blogs, forums, etc.) that's far to long to include here, especially with all the other stuff I've got below that's just on this site alone, and I'd like to offer it to you (completely free, you don't have to do anything other than sign up) right now.

Part 2: I explain what language exchanges are (essentially they allow you free access to an unlimited number of native speakers to practice your Spanish with), why they're absolutely essential if you're teaching yourself (I'm serious when I say this: it's impossible to get fluent without them if you're learning a foreign language on your own), how to use them, and which ones are the best.

Part 3: I cover chat rooms which are specifically devoted to connecting you with native Spanish speakers who want to learn English so you can chat with them in Spanish (and they'll help and correct you) and then you do the same for them with their English (these are completely free to use, but rather hard to find, but I'll tell you where the best ones are!). Sign up below!



Also, if you like what you see here PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to my Twitter feed and/or RSS feed so you can be updated any time there’s a new post.

Cheers,

Andrew

Related Posts:

• Friday Linkfest: Cool Language-Learning Links of the Previous Week of 3/20/11
• Fascinating Report from the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute: “Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice in government language teaching”
• The Awesome Language-Learning Resource that is Children’s Books

And today I’ve got my first guest post ever!  From J. over at Polyglottally, he addresses something that every language-learner has done at some point and then had to deal with…

Oh dear, you’ve fallen off the language learning wagon.

You were tired, so you took a day off. The next day you were swamped and didn’t get around to it. The day after that you forgot your cue cards at home. Next thing you know, it’s been a month and you’ve made zero progress on your language studies. How embarrassing.

You want to get back into it, you want to learn more, but now you have feelings of a) guilt for having slacked off for so long, and b) despair at the thought of having to relearn what you may have forgotten.

Well, my fellow depressed language learners, here’s how to climb back on that wagon with gusto, seize those reins, and steer yourself back on course!

(Note: I fully endorse giving yourself a full day off for a personal retreat. Go ahead, call in sick or tell your boss you’re at an all-day off-site meeting. Escape to your favourite cafe or shady tree. You deserve it.)

Step 1: Release

Absolve yourself of the guilt, release yourself from past obligations. If you continue to kick yourself for what you haven’t done, you’ll constantly be mired in the past. You can’t change the past, but you do have full power over what you choose to do right now. That’s what counts.

It’s hard to forgive yourself sometimes, especially when you think back to all that precious time you wasted playing World of Warcraft when you could have memorized the Devanagari script and be reading Hindi fluently by now. No matter, what’s done is done. Once you’ve fully forgiven yourself, then you are ready for step 2 (and perhaps another lattÈ).

Step 2: Remember

Why did you start out on this language learning quest anyway? Remember what your motivations are and place them front and centre in your brain. Like Andrew previously wrote, motivation is the most important factor in learning a new language.

It is often easy to lose sight of why we began, especially when we get bogged down in the details of case endings and verb conjugations. Remind yourself of the reason why you are trying to learn French, Spanish, Greek, Klingon, et cetera. It could be for the love of travel, the love of food, the love of the intellectual challenge, or the love of your significant other. Whatever your motivation, bring it back to the forefront of your mind.

Write down your motivation in large block letters, tack it to the wall in front of you, then order another fudge brownie and continue to step 3.

Step 3: Refocus

What is your goal? What does “success” mean to you? It’s incredible how far off course we can get when we don’t know where we are going. If, after some soul searching, you realize you only want to be able to order food in a restaurant, then why are you reviewing vocabulary for negotiating business deals?

Some quick questions to ask yourself to gauge your definition of success:

• Where and with whom do you imagine using the language?
• What level of grammatical perfection do you need? Are you writing a doctoral dissertation, or are you chatting in the bar with friends?
• What is the minimum you can get away with right now?

Focusing on your goal will tell you what you need to learn and, more importantly, what you can ignore for the moment. Your goal may very well change and increase as you approach it, which is the sign of intentional learning. But for the moment try to describe as accurately as possible what your goal is right now. Putting a timeline on it is also a good idea, but don’t stress yourself out. Write it all down, then go to step 4.

Step 4: Review

You probably remember more than you think. It may take a bit of gentle stretching to eke it out of your brain, but don’t despair: You’re not starting over from scratch.

Go through the table of contents in a grammar or phrase book, see what you know. Try translating whole conversations in your head, especially as they relate to your goal (see step 3). Gather the entire corpus of your knowledge together to remind yourself of how far you’ve come. This will not only act as a general review, it will also encourage you to see how much you already know, and hopefully reignite new interest in the act of learning the language.

Step 5: Recalibrate

Often we splash about without any real plan of what to do next. We jump on anything interesting that comes along, whether or not it helps us move towards our goal. When it turns out to be unrelated or irrelevant, we will soon forget all about it and will have then wasted our time.

Take the results from step 3 and step 4. Imagine you are looking at a big map. Where are you now? And where do you want to be? The gap in between will give you an indication of what to do next. Write down what you are missing, and this becomes your learning plan for the next little while. It’s as simple as that. Time for more coffee.

Step 6: Repeat

At the end of this personal retreat, you will have your goal and motivating force clearly articulated, you will have a summary of your past accomplishments, and you will have a game plan for what to do next. But now that you’ve forgiven your past transgressions, how do you avoid falling off that wagon again?

The answer is to conduct frequent reviews. I recommend “New Moon resolutions” (as opposed to New Year’s resolutions): the shorter time frame and higher frequency means you will have more opportunities to refresh and recalibrate your actions. Every 28 days, go through this exercise again to reinvigorate yourself, whether you feel you need it or not. The iterative process will ensure you are on track and on target. Calling in sick every month is entirely optional.

Best of luck,
J.

A Final Appeal to Language Enthusiasts

If you value language learning, and if you believe teaching languages to children is incredibly important, then please help me by voting for my project on Pepsi’s Refresh Everything grant competition. Visit my page, register with the site, and then vote as often as they will allow you! Tell all your friends, too. You can also read more about the project on my blog.

Quick edit from Andrew:

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

I run a newsletter entirely about how to learn Spanish online for free where I send out every cool new tip and technique that I learn to my subscribers and not only do they get it before anyone else but frequently they get things that no one else ever does. Additionally, I've spent a great deal of time putting together a 3-part series of articles for you on the internet's best free resources for the Spanish-learner that you'll get when you sign up for my newsletter--in addition to all of what you get below, I'll be sure to send you any updates about cool new sites, resources, and learning tips and techniques that I come up with:

Part 1: An article called “Spanish Learning Systems: Should you bother?” about whether or not you should even bother with a pre-packaged Spanish-learning system (e.g. Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur) and, if you do decide you want to, where you can go online to find programs that are literally 1/10th the price of older, more common systems like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur but actually work even better. Also, at the same time, you’ll get a separate e-mail with a very long list of my favorite Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources (tools, references, sites with free lessons, articles, blogs, forums, etc.) that's far to long to include here, especially with all the other stuff I've got below that's just on this site alone, and I'd like to offer it to you (completely free, you don't have to do anything other than sign up) right now.

Part 2: I explain what language exchanges are (essentially they allow you free access to an unlimited number of native speakers to practice your Spanish with), why they're absolutely essential if you're teaching yourself (I'm serious when I say this: it's impossible to get fluent without them if you're learning a foreign language on your own), how to use them, and which ones are the best.

Part 3: I cover chat rooms which are specifically devoted to connecting you with native Spanish speakers who want to learn English so you can chat with them in Spanish (and they'll help and correct you) and then you do the same for them with their English (these are completely free to use, but rather hard to find, but I'll tell you where the best ones are!). Sign up below!



Also, if you like what you see here PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to my Twitter feed and/or RSS feed so you can be updated any time there’s a new post.

Cheers,

Andrew

Related Posts:

• Fascinating Report from the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute: “Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice in government language teaching”
• Learning Spanish with Comics
• The Awesome Language-Learning Resource that is Children’s Books

I just saw this via Ramses’s twitter feed and although I could’ve just retweeted it I felt compelled to at least make some short comments on it that would be too long for twitter, so I’m turning it into a short blog post.  What I’m referring to is this study by Victoria University in New Zealand [corrected--thanks, Jennie!] that proves just how exceptionally important exposing yourself to a language is, even if you don’t understand a single damned word!

Y-E-S, listening to TV shows, songs, and radio broadcasts in the language you’re trying to learn is enormously helpful to you learning the language regardless of how much of it you understand – if you can understand most of it but miss the occasional word, great, just note it and look it up later, if you only understand 1 in 100 words where that 1 is an English cognate, then that’s fine, too and you don’t even need to worry about looking up words at that point: you know why?  Because if you keep listening to this stuff long enough (you’ll notice progress after just a few hours worth of listening!) then you’ll rapidly make progress in understanding what’s being said, and that’s presuming that you’re not ever using a dictionary or anything else to look up unknown words. From the article:

Dr Sulzberger has found that the best way to learn a language is through frequent exposure to its sound patterns—even if you haven’t a clue what it all means.

“However crazy it might sound, just listening to the language, even though you don’t understand it, is critical. A lot of language teachers may not accept that,” he says.

“Our ability to learn new words is directly related to how often we have been exposed to the particular combinations of the sounds which make up the words. If you want to learn Spanish, for example, frequently listening to a Spanish language radio station on the internet will dramatically boost your ability to pick up the language and learn new words.”

I think the specific noises and patterns of a language and learning them (which can only really be done by a large volume of repeated exposure to the language) is something critically important that’s often overlooked by people.  You need to get used to, to learn, the tempo, beat, the rhythm and vibe of a language–I’m sorry that doesn’t sound very concrete, but it’s the best way I can explain it.  Every language has its own unique rhythm and pattern to it, and if you’re not used to it, no matter how many words you’ve memorized (are you happy now, Randy? ) you’re not going to be able to understand the language when it’s spoken at a normal conversational rate of speed even if you know every single individual word used (that is, a sentence spoken to you at a conversational rate of speed will not be understandable by you even if you know every single word in that sentence).  I should make it clear that I don’t think everyone should quit using SRS/flashcards, hell, I use SRS and think it has its place, but there are far, FAR too many people who rely too heavily on memorizing vocabulary when trying to learn a new language and it certainly needed to be addressed, so frankly I’m glad he did it and suffered the shitstorm from it instead of me

Also, I should note that if you’d like to start listening to Spanish language TV, music, radio, and movies I’ve got several posts that will be of ENORMOUS help to you, starting with my exceptionally long and completely vetted (every single link was checked to make sure it worked!) list of free sites to watch Spanish TV online, and also my post on the ‘Telenovela Method’ which covers something a bit different (intensive listening where you look up every word as opposed to extensive listening where you don’t) and shows you exactly how to do it plus where to get the scripts and translations you’ll want for the TV shows and movies, and my recent post where I actually went through a Shakira music video with you, translated it, and analyzed the Colombian Spanish used in it with a fine-toothed comb.

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

I run a newsletter entirely about how to learn Spanish online for free where I send out every cool new tip and technique that I learn to my subscribers and not only do they get it before anyone else but frequently they get things that no one else ever does. Additionally, I've spent a great deal of time putting together a 3-part series of articles for you on the internet's best free resources for the Spanish-learner that you'll get when you sign up for my newsletter--in addition to all of what you get below, I'll be sure to send you any updates about cool new sites, resources, and learning tips and techniques that I come up with:

Part 1: An article called “Spanish Learning Systems: Should you bother?” about whether or not you should even bother with a pre-packaged Spanish-learning system (e.g. Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur) and, if you do decide you want to, where you can go online to find programs that are literally 1/10th the price of older, more common systems like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur but actually work even better. Also, at the same time, you’ll get a separate e-mail with a very long list of my favorite Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources (tools, references, sites with free lessons, articles, blogs, forums, etc.) that's far to long to include here, especially with all the other stuff I've got below that's just on this site alone, and I'd like to offer it to you (completely free, you don't have to do anything other than sign up) right now.

Part 2: I explain what language exchanges are (essentially they allow you free access to an unlimited number of native speakers to practice your Spanish with), why they're absolutely essential if you're teaching yourself (I'm serious when I say this: it's impossible to get fluent without them if you're learning a foreign language on your own), how to use them, and which ones are the best.

Part 3: I cover chat rooms which are specifically devoted to connecting you with native Spanish speakers who want to learn English so you can chat with them in Spanish (and they'll help and correct you) and then you do the same for them with their English (these are completely free to use, but rather hard to find, but I'll tell you where the best ones are!). Sign up below!



Also, if you like what you see here PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to my Twitter feed and/or RSS feed so you can be updated any time there’s a new post.

Cheers,

Andrew

Related Posts:

• Fascinating Report from the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute: “Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice in government language teaching”
• The Awesome Language-Learning Resource that is Children’s Books
• Friday Linkfest: Cool Language-Learning Links of the Previous Week of 3/20/11

The hardest part about learning your first language is figuring out what precisely to do, where to begin, coming up with a plan, a course of study for yourself–what to do, and what order to do it in.

This is one of those personal preference things, it really is: within the language-learning community, from experienced polyglots who speak half a dozen languages and have been learning languages for 20 years or more you’ll get a myriad of opinions on the matter, some of them polar opposites of each other.  And that’s fine.  They’ve tried a bunch of things and sorted out what works best for them, and you’ll have to do that, too.  There’s no getting around it: to figure out what works best for you, you’re going to have to try several different methods and styles of learning, you’re going to have to figure it out by testing.  Just like with many other things in life you’re going to have to fail your way to success: meaning the only way to figure out what works is to try a dozen things that don’t, first.

That said, I’d definitely like to give you some guidelines based off of my experience and what I’ve learned and heard from other language learners…

Vocabulary and Grammar

There is a certain minimum amount of basic vocabulary and grammar/syntax that you have to know to even begin learning to speak/read the language, but it’s probably far smaller than you think (you can get the minimum down in a few days–you’d be surprised how many words you can learn if you do it properly) and the best way to go about determining what precisely those words and rules are and then learning them is to do it in-context: this means grab any random everyday piece of writing (news story, magazine article, blog post, etc.) in the language you’re learning and then read it…yes, you’ll have to look up every single word, but that’s the point.  And as you do this you should be entering each of these words into your SRS (Spaced Repetition Software–I recommend Anki) or onto flashcards if you prefer.  In the process of doing this and forcing yourself to understand what’s being said, even if it takes you 10 minutes per sentence or something like that, you will end up learning how to use the language, the basic structure, syntax, and grammar, even if you don’t know the technical terms for them (which, as I’ve said before, you really don’t need to know).

Do this for a week or two and believe me you will end up picking up the minimum vocabulary AND grammar that you need to (and then some)–all those basic words (“the, at, go, is, are, you, he, she, it, were, am going,” etc.) that you have to know to be able to work with a language at all and how to use them (syntax/grammar), you will end up learning, it’s inevitable.  Done.

What Now?

Well, what do you want to do with the language you’re learning? Do you need to be able to, primarily, speak with other people? Do you need to be able to, primarily, read trade journals or technical manuals or news items in the language in question? Do you just want to be able to watch TV shows? What you want to do, what’s important to you, is what will determine how you go about this.

If you want to be able to speak, start speaking.  Hell, you could do that from Day 1 while you’re just getting some basic vocabulary and grammar down, throw yourself in the deep end of the pool, after you get over that initial shock of the cold water you’ll be glad you did it and you’ll find that it’s nowhere near as bad as you thought it was going to be.  Get on a language exchange site or a social network, find native speakers, or find some locally if you can, and START TALKING!

If you want to be able to read, start reading.  If you want to be able to read news items and general books, then use the method I described above, acquire those items, and start reading them–like I said, it might take you an hour to finish a single page, but you will learn FAST if you’ll do this and stick with it.  Same thing goes for if you want to be able to understand trade publications or more technical information: get the sort of material that you want to be able to read, pull up Google or an online dictionary (for Spanish I highly recommend SpanishDict) and get to work.  You’ll get faster and faster and faster as you go along, and won’t take as long as you think to get to a respectable rate of speed.

In Summary…

Notice a pattern here? Whatever it is that you want to do, the best way to learn how to do that is to start doing it no matter how bad you are at it to begin with! Just go, dive in, kick your own butt, make yourself do this–it’s not as scary as you think, you can do it!  I know I keep repeating this, but so many people want to procrastinate and delay and “prepare” by reading grammar books, doing verb conjugation workbooks, memorizing “just a few more words” before they’ll finally “be ready” to start speaking with native speakers: don’t do that, JUST GO!

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

I run a newsletter entirely about how to learn Spanish online for free where I send out every cool new tip and technique that I learn to my subscribers and not only do they get it before anyone else but frequently they get things that no one else ever does. Additionally, I've spent a great deal of time putting together a 3-part series of articles for you on the internet's best free resources for the Spanish-learner that you'll get when you sign up for my newsletter--in addition to all of what you get below, I'll be sure to send you any updates about cool new sites, resources, and learning tips and techniques that I come up with:

Part 1: An article called “Spanish Learning Systems: Should you bother?” about whether or not you should even bother with a pre-packaged Spanish-learning system (e.g. Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur) and, if you do decide you want to, where you can go online to find programs that are literally 1/10th the price of older, more common systems like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur but actually work even better. Also, at the same time, you’ll get a separate e-mail with a very long list of my favorite Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources (tools, references, sites with free lessons, articles, blogs, forums, etc.) that's far to long to include here, especially with all the other stuff I've got below that's just on this site alone, and I'd like to offer it to you (completely free, you don't have to do anything other than sign up) right now.

Part 2: I explain what language exchanges are (essentially they allow you free access to an unlimited number of native speakers to practice your Spanish with), why they're absolutely essential if you're teaching yourself (I'm serious when I say this: it's impossible to get fluent without them if you're learning a foreign language on your own), how to use them, and which ones are the best.

Part 3: I cover chat rooms which are specifically devoted to connecting you with native Spanish speakers who want to learn English so you can chat with them in Spanish (and they'll help and correct you) and then you do the same for them with their English (these are completely free to use, but rather hard to find, but I'll tell you where the best ones are!). Sign up below!



Also, if you like what you see here PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to my Twitter feed and/or RSS feed so you can be updated any time there’s a new post.

Cheers,

Andrew

Related Posts:

• President Obama Wants You to Learn Spanish (short video)
• How Many Words Do You Need to Know in Spanish (or any other foreign language)? And WHICH Words Should You Be Learning?
• Fascinating Report from the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute: “Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice in government language teaching”

Just found this, I smiled a bit, kind of funny (“Merci beau coup!” lol), but he’s absolutely right:

Most Western Europeans speak at least two languages fluently, and someone speaking 5 or 6 isn’t the least bit abnormal or special over there at all.  The fact that we’re a first-world, wealthy nation and we’re also the worst, among first-world wealthy nations such as Western Europe, Canada and Japan, when it comes to language education is just embarrassing.  Our education system is bad enough, this is just one more facet of it

Why do you think it is that we are this way (the worst as far as language education goes amongst wealthy nations)?  Seriously, let me know, leave a comment.

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

I run a newsletter entirely about how to learn Spanish online for free where I send out every cool new tip and technique that I learn to my subscribers and not only do they get it before anyone else but frequently they get things that no one else ever does. Additionally, I've spent a great deal of time putting together a 3-part series of articles for you on the internet's best free resources for the Spanish-learner that you'll get when you sign up for my newsletter--in addition to all of what you get below, I'll be sure to send you any updates about cool new sites, resources, and learning tips and techniques that I come up with:

Part 1: An article called “Spanish Learning Systems: Should you bother?” about whether or not you should even bother with a pre-packaged Spanish-learning system (e.g. Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur) and, if you do decide you want to, where you can go online to find programs that are literally 1/10th the price of older, more common systems like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur but actually work even better. Also, at the same time, you’ll get a separate e-mail with a very long list of my favorite Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources (tools, references, sites with free lessons, articles, blogs, forums, etc.) that's far to long to include here, especially with all the other stuff I've got below that's just on this site alone, and I'd like to offer it to you (completely free, you don't have to do anything other than sign up) right now.

Part 2: I explain what language exchanges are (essentially they allow you free access to an unlimited number of native speakers to practice your Spanish with), why they're absolutely essential if you're teaching yourself (I'm serious when I say this: it's impossible to get fluent without them if you're learning a foreign language on your own), how to use them, and which ones are the best.

Part 3: I cover chat rooms which are specifically devoted to connecting you with native Spanish speakers who want to learn English so you can chat with them in Spanish (and they'll help and correct you) and then you do the same for them with their English (these are completely free to use, but rather hard to find, but I'll tell you where the best ones are!). Sign up below!



Also, if you like what you see here PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to my Twitter feed and/or RSS feed so you can be updated any time there’s a new post.

Cheers,

Andrew

Related Posts:

• What Should You Start With? Grammar, Vocabulary, Basic Expressions, Everything?!!
• Fascinating Report from the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute: “Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice in government language teaching”
• The Awesome Language-Learning Resource that is Children’s Books