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Fluent in 3 months method? | ||
Tags: Fluency | Learning Technique/Method | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5568 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes  Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 25 of 42 24 June 2011 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for the feedback everyone! Glad to see a lot of people here DO get what I am trying to share :)
@Cainntear "Benny claims to be selling one or two copies per day, which makes him sound like an amateur, but as leosmith points out, this is quite a bit of cash -- it's a working wage in any country, and it's certainly more than I'm expecting to make as a professional language teacher this year (and he's taught English too, so he knows it's true), so it is more than a little incongruous for him to make claims of amateur status." I worked for Berlitz and earned more than what I would be earning now. I also worked for a different private school when in Toulouse at an extremely generous hourly wage. Just 6 weeks for that school funded my entire 3 month trip to Brazil including my return flight. I considered working for that school for 3 months a year and funding my travels for the rest of the year based only on that. I could have done it, but the work was quite stressful and left no time for a social life. You can earn a LOT as an English teacher!! You need to be more flexible on where you work if you'd like to earn more. Also, I've never claimed amateur status. Anyone reading the blog knows that I like to refer to myself as a "professional language hacker" :) What I'm earning isn't a "travel budget" as Leo put it, it's my life budget, and yes it's a working wage in most countries. If it wasn't then I wouldn't be able to maintain myself. This allows me to write very long and detailed blog posts and e-mails very frequently and make well edited videos so that I can inspire others for free. Otherwise calling me an extreme introvert is something I think you'll find pretty much everyone but yourself will disagree with! I'm saying that the whole idea of introversion and extroversion as a stamp for life is bogus for people without a medical condition. @s_allard For me it's no surprise that people don't learn a language even when living in the actual country. I meet many many expats who learn nothing. Plenty here in Istanbul, LOADS in Amsterdam, tonnes in Budapest etc. It's laziness and embracing an English speaking bubble. They are as good as being at home, but with better weather and just need to be able to order food and nothing else. This is why comments from Iversen that it's a simple case of being a nomad drive me crazy. It shows no understanding of the real world. Access to infinite plane tickets and all the free time in the world will NOT solve your language problems, as much as you may think it would. With an input mentality, you would think that simply "If I had more time to study, I'd speak better quicker!" and people might think that because I have more free time or whatever that's why I learn languages. But I've actually worked over 60 hours a week in English at times and still learned languages. The pressure of constant conversations force you to improve quicker than any self-guided study routines could. @Iversen Disagree with most of your comment. It's defeatist and saying that you have to be like me to learn to speak quickly. If being nomadic and outgoing are the criteria, then why not being vegetarian, having brown hair and using Android over iPhones too? Travelling is not a requirement to apply what I discuss. Neither is being the life of the party. If you don't want to speak as much as you want to absorb a language, that's fine, but I'd say that "there are not many Iversens in this world". People want to speak, not just experience a language. I realise this is not the case for many here, and I've made it clear that I don't actually appreciate languages in any way or at any kind of level that many here would. For me language is a means to an end, for many here it is beautiful in itself. This forum is not a representative of what most of the world is looking for. @Splog That's great to hear!! Your advice has helped me too! :) The conversational connectors and "speak a language in minutes not years" video have inspired many blog posts, so keep up the good work yourself! We have different priorities but it's great that we can learn from one another! @Lucky Charms Thanks for all that. I agree that most criticism I get will be from people who don't actually read the blog and make presumptions about what I'm about. It's ludicrous! @Po-ru "I don't quite see how one can become to anything more than an intermediate level in just 3 months" - great! Then become intermediate in 3 months, and aim for fluency in 6 or 9 months :) You'd be doing way better than most people. There's nothing magical about 3 months, it's an end-limit set by my travel arrangements. Whatever your tight limit is, then a version of Parkinson's law will demand that you squeeze your work to achieve it (or close to it) by that time. @Alacritas Precisely! Based on the very high traffic of my site, I could cover it with advertisements and sponsorship and banners, and make my sales page high pressure with cheesy images and highlighter pen etc. and I could earn MUCH more than I currently am. But I'm earning what I need to get by for the moment. As pointed out, I don't even advertise MY OWN product in banners on the main page any more! Yes there are links, but when you research how people use websites you'd see how visual banners are way more effective in driving clicks. @iguanamon Exactly - my advice isn't the only advice. Most people won't follow my tips to the letter, but if something I wrote steers them in the right direction at the right time, then maybe my advice is useful to more than just "extroverted nomads" ;) 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5946 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 26 of 42 24 June 2011 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think you've missed my point: introversion and extroversion aren't about outward behaviour. Most people mistake introversion as a synonym for "shy" and extroversion as a synonym for "sociable". Introversion may have been responsible for you being shy when you were younger, but just because you're not shy anymore doesn't mean you've stopped being an introvert. So yes, you're right that it's not a "stamp for life". The point I was making is that you probably do a lot more thinking than you realise.
Well then if that's your profession, surely you can see why people see "Fluent in 3 Months" as your professional identity, and therefore why people object to it. You could very easily start a new blog, make Fi3M redirect to it, point Facebook to it instead, and create a more appropriate "brand" for you as a professional. Fi3M is fine as an amateur blog title, but not as your professional brand. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5946 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 27 of 42 24 June 2011 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes, but like it or not, the common understanding of "fluent" is "at an advanced level". Benny's blog is not aimed at members of the linguistics profession, it is aimed at your average man on the street, and all of them will interpret it that way. It is the writer's job to write in a language his audience understands. Tha mi cinnteach gum bi thu ag aontachadh dhomh.
Well I for one have read quite a bit of his blog. I can't speak for anyone else here, but don't be too quick to dismiss everyone who disagrees as not knowing what they're talking about. Edited by Cainntear on 24 June 2011 at 3:31pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 28 of 42 24 June 2011 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm somewhat surprised by this angry answer, and I suppose that it is caused more by previous discussions than by the things I actually wrote. I didn't refer to you as "the life of the party", but it is clear from your own descriptions that you build your language learning on talking to people around you from the moment you start learning a language. And yes, I noticed that you have developed this courage rather than being born with it. Having people around you to speak to in a certain language is easier if you live in their country, though of course there are alternatives, such as seeking places with immigrants in your own country or using Skype etc.But it is undeniable easier to use a communicative strategy for language learning in a place where everybody is speaking your new target language (and no, I didn't say it is easy or can be done without some hard work). So if you don't live in such a place and aren't that keen on searching for people speaking the relevant language in your own country, what then? In that case you can follow the other strategy, where you learn mainly from input, which is gradually turned into output using such methods as thinking silently and writing essays. I call this 'preparation' because it functions as such, but actually working with languages at home and taking a short holiday once in a while is not the worst thing you can do. So where is the defaitist angle in this? You do things your way and I do them my way. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5568 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 29 of 42 24 June 2011 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@Iversen "And yes, I noticed that you have developed this courage rather than being born with it." It didn't seem like that from your previous comment.
Living in a place is not going to help and even though I travel, travelling has nothing to do with my language learning advice. For example, I learned most of my Portuguese in France and arrived in Brazil with good non-Portuñol speaking abilities. How? By meeting up with and hanging out with Brazilians. Spending time with (native) human beings is the core of my advice. Where you do this is irrelevant. I discuss here how travelling doesn't help learn a language. If you aren't keen on putting in the work to find those natives where you live or over Skype, then GET KEEN. I found those Brazilians by messaging people in the Orkut community. Nowadays I use Couchsurfing. It takes me five minutes to search and send an e-mail. Saying you can't do this is silly. If you don't *want* to meet up with natives, then that's something different entirely. Sometimes it's important to admit that maybe speaking simply isn't that much of a priority for you. The same way I clearly don't care about other aspects of languages. Agreed that we do things different ways, because we have different priorities. I'm not saying you should start learning "my way", but saying that the majority are not like me is simply not true. People don't learn languages to visit museums abroad; they do it with aspirations of conversing. I think many people in this forum would be similar to you and be passionate about languages for themselves, but me and most of the population are not. I write text messages with intentional mistakes and numbers in place of letters in them (something academics may view as polluting the language), I read magazine articles and blogs rather than classic novels and I find grammar tedious rather than interesting (unless I already speak the language well). The reason my blog has grown so much is because of this. There are more "Bennies" out there than you think. @Cainntear "Benny's blog is not aimed at members of the linguistics profession, it is aimed at your average man on the street, and all of them will interpret it [definition of fluency] that way." Never thought I'd say this, but I agree 100% with you! :) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 42 24 June 2011 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well, I have never tried to hide that communication isn't my purpose in learning languages (at least not after I have learnt enough languages to cover much of the world). And you are probably spot on when you say that most people learn languages to communicate. The difference is that most people stay in one spot and learn the languages which are necessary for communicating with their neighbours, and maybe one or two more to watch TV or films or surf on the internet. They don't become serial learners. Those who do bother about learning more languages than strictly necessary will probably belong in one of two categories: those who just like to KNOW many languages and those who want to COMMUNICATE with people from many different language communities. And if communication from an early stage is an important element in your language learning then it must be better to stay there where your target languages are spoken - which could be back home if you have people to speak to. For me this isn't so important so I can choose the home study model, and then I make short trips abroad to get a boost now and then. While you stay 3 months in each location and then move onwards to a new place, I stay less than a week abroad and then return home, but altogether I travel more than two months every year. It's just another lifestyle which suits me better than moving from place to place, and it fits my learning style as a glove. Edited by Iversen on 24 June 2011 at 5:06pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5050 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 31 of 42 24 June 2011 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Personally, I'm someone without the ability to travel, who has trouble talking to strangers, and still I've learned a lot from Benny. At least now when I'm being shy I recognise that I'm just making learning harder on myself, and I'm gradually trying to get over this. One of these days when I take my weekly walk to Le Croissant for a raspberry croissant, I'll ask for it in French (I keep wimping out at the last moment), and when I do it will be largely thanks to Benny.
As for the people who are acting like Benny shouldn't be able to make a living off his blog, I think that's pretty ridiculous. I bought his book specifically because I think what he does is so cool and I wanted to help him continue. This whole argument is really rather silly. We all know already that there are different definitions of fluency, and that people have different priorities in language learning, so I don't see why there should be animosity between people just because they have different goals and therefore go about achieving them in different ways. Oh, and I readily admit to being a Benny fangirl. :P 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5528 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 32 of 42 24 June 2011 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This thread seems to have become sidetracked. Back the OP's question, I actually found
the following through Benny's twitter page: 6 weeks of Spanish 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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