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Benny’s Book | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Cristianoo Triglot Senior Member Brazil https://projetopoligRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3934 days ago 175 posts - 289 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, FrenchB2, English Studies: Russian | Message 41 of 91 11 January 2014 at 11:20pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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@Benny - I've read many posts from your blog and I think you're right: speaking from
day one and total immersion (real or simulated) are the best things to learn, although everything comes with a price: It's far more difficult to implement this than traditional learning. Congratulations on the book. Any chance of a copy in portuguese? Many folks here in Brazil would benefit from it. @culebrilla - I agree when you say that it's not fair to compare traditional language classes with self-study because we tend to spend more time then they do. I don't see language classes as bad things, I see then as expensive but not bad. The real problem here is that people think that by taking a 3h/week class, plus 1/2 hour tops doing homework/week, never speaking, almost never watching movies or listening songs is going to make them fluent. Edited by Cristianoo on 11 January 2014 at 11:21pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| culebrilla Senior Member United States Joined 3810 days ago 246 posts - 436 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 42 of 91 11 January 2014 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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@cristianoo.
Even if people think that, they sure are going to realize that it isn't enough after a month. :) It is a controversial topic regarding input vs active learning. I think a mixed approach is best. If you just start speaking you can get into bad habits and learn the wrong way of pronouncing things. That is the danger of just speaking right from the start. On the other hand, the danger of doing 1,000 hours of listening then finally speaking is that you may never make the transition and I don't think there is a high percentage of people that would be willing to do such a thing. Really, there should be peer-reviewed research put out about the most effective learning styles and not just anecdotal examples. It's not possible to follow the scientific method sometimes but the closer we can get the better. Edit: Just thought about it and the efficiency of a method need not necessarily be the best way of learning. Hypothetically, you could have a very efficient method but your potential is capped. Conversely, you could have a less efficient way of doing things that leads to better eventual results. The example I have is that of physician assistant school (6 years of post HS schooling) vs that of medicine (11-15 years of post HS schooling). The PA route is more efficient to crank out health providers, but since they had half the number of years of didactic training and much, much less supervised practical learning, the knowledge of a PA will undoubtedly be much less than that of a board certified attending physician. A lot of the diseases that we study in medicine only affect like 1 out of 50,000 people but you best know those diseases! Edited by culebrilla on 11 January 2014 at 11:52pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4641 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 43 of 91 12 January 2014 at 12:30am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Anyone putting Benny in the same category as Clugston is way off the mark, IMHO.
Whether you agree with everything he says or not, Benny is all positive, and usually makes me smile (in a good way) when I read him or hear him. Clugston is the opposite. I'd been going to post the above, or something very similar, before I realised Benny was contributing to this thread, but anyway, I'm happy if he knows that everyone isn't knocking him. On the subject of the title, I'm not sure if authors necessarily have much control over that. Publishers these days are business people more than book people, and they will use what they think is commercially attractive. Good luck with the book. It should be an interesting read. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5446 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 44 of 91 12 January 2014 at 3:24am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Thanks to so many of you for the very kind words and continued support! :)
The UK edition will be available internationally. Amazon UK ship to Europe no problem. In fact, local Amazons absorb many big books. I just quickly checked and it's on Amazon.de with free shipping! Otherwise, to avoid shipping issues, you can read the digital version on a Kindle, iPad or Android device through the Kindle app/store. As far as I know, this really is the best way to get ANY book in English outside of Anglophone regions. I had to buy all my Japanese learning books printed in English from Amazon.es, since none of them were in even the biggest bookshops in Spain. The same, of course, goes for non-English books I've wanted to buy IN English speaking countries ;)
I know, right? While I imagine there will be plenty to disagree with. The vast majority of the book will show people that at least there are real options, through explanations many of you will definitely agree with, and give them a realistic idea of those options. I go out of my way to say that my way is not THE way, and urge people to look into other polyglots. And I also say that plenty of hard work is involved, and that you can't simply throw money at your problems. This to us is obvious, but to the vast majority of Americans I've met, RS's marketing has been so effective that they really do think that it's THE way to learn a language. It's insane, and something that needs to be challenged not just in discussions online but at the same kind of exposure level RS get themselves.
I was very happy to include his advice in this book. One of the things I'm most eager about in this whole process is giving really clever people who haven't had the same chance to go viral as my message has, the stage in front of many of people.
While the Portuguese copy of my ebook came out 2 months after the English one, sadly traditional publishing is not as fast! Having said that, one of the points I pushed on REALLY hard in my contract was to force the publisher's hand - they have exactly one year to sell the rights of the book to other language publishers and if they don't do that, all non-English rights fall right back to me. This clause is usually not added into contracts, and they can take many years, or simply never happen. (Either that, or the book is only contracted for one country. Mine has international rights though, so the publisher may well go ahead and sell the rights to other countries immediately after publishing if they can prove good sales potential) When this time runs out I can pitch it to a Brazilian/French/German etc. publisher myself, who can get it on many bookshelves in various countries or simply self-publish. When a book comes out in any place, I'd go there myself to give it a boost with a book tour and such. So you won't see any non-English versions of it this year, but there likely will be several next year! ;) Edited by irishpolyglot on 12 January 2014 at 3:37am 14 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cristianoo Triglot Senior Member Brazil https://projetopoligRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3934 days ago 175 posts - 289 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, FrenchB2, English Studies: Russian | Message 45 of 91 12 January 2014 at 3:39am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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@Benny
Good! People here need some advices on learning languages and since English is our primary target (and most of the time, the only one), an English book would be useless. Well, I don't know If I could be of any help, but you can msg me if you need it, ok? Boa sorte com as vendas! Até breve. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4520 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 46 of 91 12 January 2014 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
That's fantastic! Here in the Netherlands we don't have a local Amazon, so usually I have to buy from France or Germany or the UK instead (but usualy I go through bol.com for Dutch/English/French/German). I have also found a Swedish webshop for Swedish books. I think I'll place a pre-order soon; I'm an experienced language learner, but it's especially interesting to read about the parts that are, for me, uncharted territory, such as the polishing of languages at higher levels, accent formation and so on. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5243 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 47 of 91 14 January 2014 at 5:13am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I don't know if there's something in the air, but in addition to Benny's book, soon there will be Fluent Forever.
by Gabriel Wyner who, to my knowledge, is not a contributor here. (Full disclosure: I have pre-ordered both books). For whatever it's worth,we note that both authors are engineers by training. What's there about engineering that leads to polyglottery? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5020 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 48 of 91 14 January 2014 at 11:04am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Awesome. I have to say I was a bit disappointed by the Language Hacking Guide; the content is great, but I didn't feel there was much new to learn from it after having read the blog. It's good to hear that this book is all original content, and importantly, it deals with advanced topics and pronunciation. And of course it'll hopefully reach a wider audience than the blog: I can imagine it could potentially grab a lot of people's attention in bookshops and show them that learning a language is realistic, which is only a good thing even if people disagree with Benny's particular claims or methods.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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