What's the most effective method you've found for learning?

dory wrote: »

Mostly visualization and word association. Attach a big story to a word. Like if the word for station is monstair or something, imagine a monster coming into the station to remember that.


I think it's so hard to find information because he writes so often, so he has to write a lot of waffle around the good stuff to get up his readership. You have to dig deep to get past the, 'Stop thinking, speak' stuff.

Excuse me for going slightly off topic while I make my point. I've read a lot of his stuff recently and while he is certainly inspiring, I think a lot of what he writes is total rubbish. He has this really irritating arrogant attitude going, which really is arrogance rather than confidence. He seems really out of touch sometimes, making statements about how anyone can just go off and learn a language in the country it's spoken, that those who claim they are too shy to go up and speak to strangers (to practise languages) are deluded, things like that. He just constantly pushes this 'you can ONLY learn to speak a language by speaking with natives' thing, poo-pooing any ideas of using flashcards or vocab lists or podcasts.

What irks me is that he really isn't even that great at the languages he speaks, which is surprising since he has written many, many posts about how to lose your English accent, how to sound like a native, things like that. Yes, he does appear to be fairly fluent from the video blogs (although it's all scripted and practised) but his accent in French is horrendous. His Spanish is very good, but he still mispronounces many of the sounds and most certainly would never be mistaken for a native (which is a claim he makes on a regular basis). I know nobody is perfect, and it is impressive that he speaks so many languages, but if he can't manage to take his own advice, what makes him think it's so easy for his readers who don't have the ability to live abroad and interact with target languages speakers every day?

I also disagree about speaking with natives being the only way to learn. Of course it's brilliant, but Mr Polyglot doesn't seem to get that some people genuinely don't have the time or ability to do this. I've always being pretty enthusiastic about practising, and I still only manage about 3-5 hours a week of talking to natives. His idea that everyone can manage hours a day is just not realistic for most people. And I just don't agree that ONLY speaking is enough. I personally think that using your commuting time to listen to a Linguaphone CD or look at flash cards can be pretty effective. You could argue that it leads to people developing a passive knowledge of a language, but I think if you back it up with some interaction with human beings, it's fine. I've learned loads from watching either foreign movies with English subtitles or English movies with foreign subtitles. It's waaay more fun than learning lists of vocab (which does work for some people, but not for me), I think the fact there is an image on screen really helps with connecting words and phrases to concepts. Flashcard systems like Anki can be really good as well, especially for tricky words you seem to forget a lot, although I think you SHOULD NOT generally learn words in a list in a bilingual format, like apple = manzana. That only encourages you to think in English and translate and you will never be fluent doing that. I would only use vocab lists or flashcards for highly specialised or technical vocab.

I believe that there are different types of learners and therefore no one definite way to learn vocab. I learn well from listening and/or watching, for example I picked up 5 or 6 phrases of Romanian (which I don't speak at all) from eavesdropping on a conversation today. Some people just wouldn't be able to do that, they need to see the words written down. I find reading in foreign languages tedious and quite boring, so reading the paper doesn't work well for me but plenty of people swear by it. I think you should just try a mixture of things until you find something that works. I don't believe language learning should be a chore. I would certainly rather learn vocab from watching Sex and the City with Dutch subs than slog over books every night. If the method you choose is boring, you just won't do it.

Enkidu wrote: »

I must say I noticed this as well. In that video where he speaks eight different languages I noticed that about a few of them. His Irish in particular is completely off. Irish has two spoken consonants for each written consonant, he tends to only pronounce one of them. In some cases, r for example, neither of the two spoken versions sound like the English r (one sounds almost like a j), but he pronounces just like an English r.

All of them sound off to me, except Italian and that's because I can't speak it well enough to tell. I think he tries SO hard to sound 'native' that he ends up overdoing all the sounds and exaggerating features of the languages. His Brazilian accent just sounds like a foreigner trying to sound like a Brazilian. Now, obviously he speaks the languages fairly well and he does have a 'good' accent, but I just refuse to believe all these claims he makes, such as 'Argentineans think I'm Spanish'. No, they don't. No Spanish speaker would ever take him for a native Spanish speaker. He can't even pronounce 'Jose' correctly (he pronounces the S as a Z, like most English speakers). This is part of why I find him arrogant, I think he thinks his languages are far better than they really are and then uses himself as an example of how 'easy' it is. He presents an example of someone thinking he's native because he managed to pronounce three words without an accent and then says 'LOOK! See how easy it is to sound native! I only learned X for 3 months!' Guess what, I can sound 'native' for a few rehearsed sentences in Cantonese. Doesn't mean a thing.

As you said a lot of his suggestions won't work for everybody. I like to learn lots of grammar and get the phonetics right first, before trying to build my vocab. His "no grammar" approach wouldn't suit me it all.

Exactly. But he would shoot you down for suggesting that. He shoots anyone down who dares to suggest there might be other options, and often in a really rude way. I also find it more useful to learn a bit of grammar than to go up to someone sounding like a 4 year old.

However I do think he has useful suggestions about methods of learning you wouldn't think of yourself, such as loading textbooks on to Kindle in pdf format, e.t.c.

Indeed. A lot of his suggestions are really useful, that's why I read so much of the blog. I just don't agree with this 'one method for all' idea.

The other thing is that I don't think he assumes people have the time to just drop things and leave, more so that you can always utilise the time you have by doing stuff you might find embarrasing initially. For example you manage to speak to native speakers, a lot of people wouldn't do this because they find it embarrasing. I do agree with his general point that sometimes people just keep studying and studying and after years can't speak because they've never done anything active.

I also agree with his general point, but he has said several times that 'anyone' can live abroad and travel and that luck doesn't have anything to do with it. Well, that's utter bullsh*t. Some people are in piles of debt, have disabilities, have commitments at home (hospital, family members), there are plenty of reasons why it would be much more difficult for some people to do what he does. But he never acknowledges this. I find that he tends to over-congratulate himself without acknowledging that he has had a lot of good fortune as well. I also did not really appreciate his recent post which claimed that shy people are just deluded. Again, I totally see his point, that people should just get out there and speak, but he shows an alarming lack of compassion and empathy for people who really do have shyness/anxiety/depression issues. I don't see the benefit in such people forcing themselves to get out and speak when they would much prefer sitting in with a grammar book or watching films with subs. They're still going to learn a good bit, aren't they? I think he really does seem to assume that everyone in the world is like him and learns the way he does. I know plenty of people who became fluent in a language with very little real interaction with natives.

Also I should say two things:
1. He is definitely correct that anybody can learn a language and a lot of people are held back by a negative attitude.

I don't agree that anyone can learn to speak at an almost-native level, which he often seems to claim. He even tried to argue that it's physically possible for ANYONE to roll their R's, which is totally untrue. I do agree that a lot of people are held back by their attitude, yes.

2. I really do not think he is arrogant. As you said he ignores a lot of the realities of learning a language, but I think that's because he's a bit blind to some things in his enthusiasm. However there is nothing I would have taken directly as arrogance, it's not like he's saying "Only really clever people like me can learn a language".

I think he's arrogant because:

1) He overestimates his own ability.
2) He refuses to acknowledge other peoples' (real) issues with learning.
3) He thinks he knows better about EVERYTHING. Even medical issues and things like that. He is constantly telling people that conditions don't exist, it's all in their head. I find that incredibly arrogant and grating. Who does he think he is, like?
4) He seems to think his own experience is so much more valuable and valid than anyone else's. Just have a read of the comments pages. He is constantly telling perfectly reasonable and intelligent commentators that they're wrong because they don't agree with him.

I don't mean to totally slate the guy (although it seems I have ). I do think his blog is very interesting and a lot of his advice is good. I really do appreciate his enthusiasm and all that and find the whole thing inspiring. I just take everything he writes with a huge grain of salt. At the end of the day, it's impossible to become 'fluent' (in the way most of us understand the word) in a language in three months. I just don't buy it. What I think he is doing is a good impression of fluency. Mimicking the accent, mastering the basics, being able to have simple conversations. Because so much of a language comes from the culture, you just cannot get the hang of all the idioms, colloquial usage etc in such a short space of time. I'm not even convinced that someone could get a handle on the grammar in that space of time. While I do agree that speaking is one of the best ways to learn, I also think study is very important, especially for those who do not have an 'ear' for languages or who are more introverted. Speaking all the time is not for everyone, IMO.

dory wrote: »

That's exactly what it is really. Think about it; he's been doing this since 2003. He currently speaks 8 languages (his Irish is very questionable). Take away English and Irish and you're left with 6. 6 in 7 years is not fluent in 3 months! He wrote about it before saying how long he'd been in each country; Spain 18 months, I think France was around 6-7 months, he did 6 years of German in school. I can't remember the others but from what I remember of his writing he has never gone from 0 - fluent in 3 months.

I think he has done some projects such as Czech and Hungarian in 2-3 months but he's obviously not fluent in them, so I don't see the point he's trying to make. I think he might have learned Portuguese in a few months, but all the others, he studied in school and/or lived in the country for a considerable amount of time.

I just don't understand what he's trying to do. He claims he's not learning the languages for 'bragging rights' but that's exactly how it looks to me - learning how to 'seem' fluent. And what's the point in that, really? Who exactly is he trying to impress? Would the time spent pretending to master 8 languages not be better spent actually learning two or three?