How to Become a Polyglot by D. Spivak (Polyglots) Language Learning Forum

How to Become a Polyglot by D. Spivak
Tags: Foreign Languages \| Polyglot \| Reading \| Learning Technique/Method \| Book \| Russian
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Language Learning Forum : Polyglots

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s0fist
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4835 days ago
260 posts - 445 votes

Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French

Message 73 of 73

04 January 2012 at 2:14am | IP Logged

Iversen wrote:

Actually I have been reading fragments of it partly extensively for fun, partly intensively for learning Russian. It is clearly a pioneering work, but I find it a little bit loose in its structure and a little bit too informal - it is like having Spivak sitting in an armchair and chatting about his book project (with lots of examples) rather than reading a hardcore documentation. But it is entertaining, and until Erard comes out with his Babel no more there is no competition to speak of.

I read the book a couple of times quite a while ago though, but
my general impression was that it was never intended as a formal survey or documentation,
in fact my impression is that it's written specifically with the young "pioneer/пионер" audience
(пионер is the Russian equivalent of boyscouts/brownies organization for ages up to high school, a term I couldn't resist using after hearing "pioneering work")
which is to say it's written towards general audience with the express purpose of being clear and simple about what it is, what it takes, and what to do to become and remain a polyglot.

It's a great book as far as polyglottery goes, though it might be a bit dated in some of the science and techniques, being 20+ years old and especially given the latest in the neuroscience of learning and language acquisition, as well as the emergence of technological means and methods of language study.

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