Amo Newbie Spain idiomas247.com Joined 3818 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Studies: English*
| Message 1 of 36 17 June 2014 at 11:36am | IP Logged |
Has anyone tried Tim FerrisĀ“s language post for learning anything in 3 months?
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 2 of 36 17 June 2014 at 11:50am | IP Logged |
link?
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Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5323 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English
| Message 3 of 36 17 June 2014 at 12:11pm | IP Logged |
Your Google-fu weak is. :-)
The link is here. It's the usual "focus on the most important aspects first etc." spiel. Nothing new for you and me.
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Fenn Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4894 days ago 51 posts - 119 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian
| Message 4 of 36 17 June 2014 at 1:07pm | IP Logged |
Keep in mind, like Benny, his idea of 'learned' is somewhere between A1 and A2.
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kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4892 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish
| Message 5 of 36 17 June 2014 at 7:21pm | IP Logged |
I've seen his book before. In fact, I almost linked to it on the 'most ridiculous
advice thread.'
As far as I can tell his general advice is: be efficient, effective, and consistent.
And his language specific advice: learn vocabulary and grammar.
I never saw anything deeper than this - am I missing something? 'Cause what I read is
the generic stuff you see in late-night ads for personal-empowerment seminars.
Edited by kanewai on 17 June 2014 at 9:09pm
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emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5535 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map
| Message 6 of 36 17 June 2014 at 8:23pm | IP Logged |
Fenn wrote:
Keep in mind, like Benny, his idea of 'learned' is somewhere between A1 and A2. |
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Benny Lewis's definition of "fluent" is almost always B2, and he's pretty clear about this in his book, and I think also on his blog. He also has various B2 through C2 certificates in several languages, so he's certainly acquainted with what B2 implies. Benny, has, however, failed to reach B2 in quite a few of his missions, including Chinese and Egyptian Arabic. He tends to do best with European languages, as far as I can tell, and he's lucky to reach even B1 in a truly unfamiliar language.
Personally, I suspect that "B2 in 3 months" is probably possible for an experienced polyglot who already knows a related language. FSI goes from nothing to C1 in under six months in several "easy" languages, and I went from A2 to B2 in about four months when I learned French, studying about 30 hours per week. If somebody told me, "Drop everything you're doing. If you can pass the DELE B2 Spanish exam in 3 months starting from today, I'll pay you a year's income," I'd take the bet.
But at the same time, I think that learning a language really fast is basically a stunt. There are people who can hike all 2,000 miles of the Appalachian Trail in under 50 days, but they need a support crew and they hike 40+ miles a day through mountains. For normal people, four months is good, and six months is perfectly reasonable. The same goes for language learning: You can reach a decent level pretty fast if you pick an easy language, you know what you're doing, and you devote your life to it. But for normal students, it's usually going to take longer.
As for Tim Ferris's post, it's pretty lightweight. Many people who learn a language have a surprisingly hard time explaining how they did it, especially at the intermediate and advanced levels. Lots of people here on HTLAL will give you more specific advice.
Edited by emk on 18 June 2014 at 3:52am
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kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4850 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese
| Message 7 of 36 18 June 2014 at 3:04am | IP Logged |
emk wrote:
Lots of people here on HTLAL will give you more specific advice. |
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Yes, like that. Great post, emk.
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shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4447 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French
| Message 8 of 36 18 June 2014 at 6:09am | IP Logged |
The bottom-line of learning any language is to be able to communicate. The focus is to be able to carry
on a basic conversation.
Many people are caught up with the fact that you need to learn half-dozen grammar rules, words &
phrases and that it would take years before you get anywhere. Learning a language is a social affair. As
long as you find a few people to talk with in your target language, you'll go much further.
I know somebody who took Japanese for a few years but never got to the point of being able to
communicate. Probably he never made an effort to get ahead either. If you keep going back to the same
phrase book: "Hello, good morning, my name is"... you're not going to get anywhere. The last time the
family was out for dinner, there was somebody at the dinner table who took Mandarin for 6 months. For
somebody who has a background in Cantonese and had some knowledge of writing Chinese characters
it was a big flop. On the other hand, he avoided listening to radio programs in Mandarin so this explains
his problem.
Edited by shk00design on 18 June 2014 at 6:11am
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