Benny Lewis's Blog, page 96

Benny & Lauren’s plane, train & automobile travels: Week 3 of Esperanto learning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGACDw-JlX0

This last week was a pretty crazy one! We left Ireland by driving to the ferry port, getting a ferry (with the car) across to Wales, driving to Manchester, flying from Manchester to Cherleroi, getting a train to Brussels, and then on to Bruges, and finally in AMSTERDAM. Wow!

(By the way, if you are in Amsterdam and want to meet up, you have a choice of TWO different book signing and language learning discussion events to come along to that I’ll be hosting – free to attend as always! One at 5:30pm next Thursday (29th) in Waterstones, and one at 7:30pm Tuesday June 3rd in ABC Treehouse. Click the links to sign-up and see you there!)

To mix things up a little, I passed the commentary microphone over to Lauren this week! She prepared what she wanted to say and wrote it all out herself. I only glanced at it, so a few minor mistakes may have snuck through but you can hear how she is doing to use the language with a prepared script. You also get to see how we got around studying without Internet (since we rely on websites like Lernu/Memrise a lot), and see some funny moments in our interactions.

Check it out and enjoy this week’s fun update! Looking forward to your comments as always

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Benny & Lauren’s plane, train & automobile travels: Week 3 of Esperanto learning is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!

Have you seen my TEDx talk? You can get much better details of how I recommend learning a language if you watch it here.

As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip) to read two chapters free of charge!

How to Learn a Language like Google

Time for another guest post from Fluentin3months’ most active contributor (other than me, Benny)… Idahosa Ness of mimicmethod!

Today he gives us insight into how speech recognition works, and how we can take a leaf out of Google’s speech recognition methods (which as an Android user, I can confirm are pretty spot on, even for an Irish accent!) and shares with us an excellent Kickstarter that he has running based on mixing his audio based learning methods with Duolingo’s database of sentences! If anything, his super fast multilingual rap at the start of the video is worth visiting the Kickstarter page alone!

Over to you Idahosa:

You can learn a lot about how language works by studying how software-engineers approach the challenge of speech-recognition. In the early days of the field, engineers theorized that getting a computer to recognize speech was merely a question programming a large database of word recordings into it. For example, get a speaker to say the phrase “I can’t wait to watch this Kickstarter video!”, and the machine would be able to link the phrase with the sounds from its database and tease out the component words:

“I…can’t…wait….to…watch…this…kick…starter…video…”

Made sense in theory, but in practice things didn’t work out quite so well.  Engineers would input spoken phrases, and the machine would output complete gibberish:

“again…way….to…watches…kid…star…video…”

At first, the engineers attributed the problem to a lack of variation in the word database. People speak with slightly different accents, and even the same person will pronounce the same word differently depending on context.  So for each word in the database they expanded the list of possible pronunciations. But no matter how sophisticated they made the word database, the machine still struggled to recognize even the most basic phrases. If a phrase is just a sequence of words, how can a machine that can recognize words NOT be able to recognize phrases? Good question.  Let’s Google it… The reason this approach failed so miserably was because it didn’t account for the intrinsic ambiguity of language. When you analyze the acoustics of speech, you find that we’re never consistent in the way we say things.  A single meaning will be attached to a large number of distinct sound sequences, and a single sound sequence will have a variety of different meanings attached to it.

The recording below is a good demonstration of this: I am intending to say the letters “N-Y-C,” but in a different context one could interpret these exact same sounds to mean something else.  In fact, the original context for these sounds was the phrase “And I see you have a sister.” Computers hate ambiguity, because they only know how to work with precise data.  The sound profile of “N-Y-C” has a single physical reality to it and thus can only have a single interpretation to it as well.  A computer can’t decide to interpret the same sound sequence to mean “NYC” one day and “and I see” the next. Or can it?

The Google Approach to Speech Recognition

Remember back when Google had a free 411 service?  You could call in and ask for movie showtimes or restaurant listings and the automated voice would analyze your speech, plug it into the Google search engine, then return an answer to you. Turns out the reason they offered this service for free was because they were secretly recording each and every one of these interactions in order to “teach” the speech recognition software that now operates on every Android device. If I called in and said “N-Y-C” the same way I did in the recording above, Google would analyze the sound sequence just like the old machines, but instead of trying to get it right on the first try, it would simply make a random guess and ask the user for feedback.

“I think you said ‘and I see,’ is that correct?”

If I responded“no” – that specific guess would be downvoted within their system.  If I say “yes,” the guess would be upvoted within the system. Repeat this trial-and-error game billions of times in billions of different context and eventually the higher probability choices emerge to the top, and Google starts to get really good at guessing the right answer on the first try. It won’t work 100% of the time, but if you’ve ever tried to transcribe a message on an Android phone you’ll know that it is impressively accurate.  It’s at least waaay better than those crappy automated customer support machines that make you want to throw your phone into a river.

Operator: I think you said you want to hear your account balance.  Is that correct? Please say yes or no You: Nooooo Operator : I’m sorry, I didn’t get that, please try calling back later You: GAAAAH!!!

Comparing the Two Approaches in Computers and Humans

The original approach to speech recognition is the exact same as the traditional approach to language learning.  Typically, language learners focus first on growing their database of vocabulary, then they try to deconstruct spoken phrases into the component words they know. Unsurprisingly, the approach is as ineffective for humans as it is for computers.

You can know all the vocabulary and grammar in the world, but if you can’t place these words in a real context, then you won’t be able to link “what you know” with “what you’re hearing.” In other words, knowing words in isolation is not enough to recognize them in real speech. The Google approach is much closer to how we naturally process language.  Just like Google, we don’t rely solely on the sound inputs to make sense of what someone is saying to us; we consider the context as well. Think back on that “NYC” example again.

The first time Google heard a user say this phrase, it had no idea what the person was saying, so it just flipped a coin and guessed. But after guessing and storing millions of upvotes and downvotes, it starts to pick up on contextual patterns for this sound sequence.  For example, it might find that there’s a 93.7% chance that the user is saying “N-Y-C” when it follows the word “Brooklyn.”

You: Google…Pizza restaurants in Brooklyn, NYC Google: “Did you say ‘N-Y-C?´ Actually you know what-  forget I even asked. I KNOW that’s what you said SUCKA!”

As Google becomes more familiar with different contexts, it starts to make fewer random guesses and more informed judgments.   Our brains make the same sort of context-calculations all the time. If I called you right now and said: “I’m flying into ‘and I see’ this weekend for a conference,” you’d most likely hear me say: “I’m flying into NYC this weekend for a conference.”  Even if I articulated “and I see” slightly more clearly, there’s still a good chance you wouldn’t notice because it simply doesn’t fit in the context. Next time you’re waiting at a bus stop, point to your watch and ask the stranger next to you:

“Excuse me sir, you know what ramen is?”

Nine times out of of ten, he’ll respond with the time:

“Yeah – my watch says half past noon.”

Just like Google, the stranger at the bus stop makes snap judgments based on context and experience. This is why when learning a foreign language, the most important thing is that you collect as many contexts as possible. Don’t become obsessed with accumulating as many vocabularies as possible like some sort of flash card hoarder.  Plop yourself in the middle of the language environment right from the beginning and hit up all the locals Google 411 style! This is what Benny is getting at with his Speak from Day 1 philosophy.  It doesn’t matter that you’re guessing wrong all the time in the beginning; all that matters is that you keep guessing over and over again. Eventually, you’ll start guessing right.

Duolingo and The Mimic Method – The Perfect 1-2 Punch

This sounds all nice and peachy on paper, but many of us know that entering a new language environment with zero background can be overwhelming.  There are two reasons for this:

You can’t process the sounds of a new language.
You don’t know which contexts to prioritize.  

The second problem is the one that most language learning courses address.  You have no idea which contexts are most relevant within a language, so the course or teacher decides for you by leading you down what they consider to be the shortest path. Duolingo undoubtedly does the best job of this.

Duolingo shows you the shortest path by organizing contexts in the form of mini-lessons on a “skill tree”. It doesn’t explicitly teach you any grammar.  Instead it steps aside and lets you guess, and the same way we 411 users provided Google with feedback with a simple “yes” or “no,” Duolingo provides us with feedback with a simple “DING!” or “wamp wamp” . But Duolingo doesn’t address the sound problem. Listen closely to the phrase below then try to mimic it (*Recording courtesy of RhinoSpike.com user Paratishpa): Unless you happen to be a fluent speaker of Mongolian, this task will have been “overwhelming” for you because you can’t accurately perceive the raw sounds.  

This is a serious problem, because the Google approach to language-learning is predicated on the ability to accurately process speech sound.  If you can’t process the sounds than you can’t store the sounds.  And if you can’t store the sounds then you won’t be able recognize the contexts when listening to native speech. This was never an issue for Google because processing and storing acoustic data is a pretty routine task for modern computers.  Unfortunately, you can’t just look up the sound drivers for Mongolian or any other language on the web and download them directly into your brains via Bluetooth connection (and no- it won’t work for USB either).

You can, however, train and dramatically improve your ability to process sound in a second language.  It’s just a question of listening closely, making your best guess, getting feedback on that guess, then repeating the process over and over again.  

This is exactly what the Mimic Method app will do for you if you “Fund the Flow” and help us realize our Kickstarter project. We will equip you with the tools to tune your ear to the finer nuances of the sounds,  empower you to take your best guess, then give you precise and personalized feedback on this guess so you know exactly what you need to adjust. The the same way Duolingo makes the context-training experience fun and addictive by gamifying it with rewards and cartoon birds in different clothing, we make the sound-training experience fun and rewarding by funkifying it with music and singing ‘afrovatars’ in different hats!

Indeed, Duolingo is the best app out there for learning what stuff means in your target language, and once it’s been fully funded and realized, The Mimic Method app will be the best app out there for learning how stuff sounds in your target language.   That’s why we decided to design a pronunciation training program specifically for users of the Duolingo app.

The idea is for you to accelerate the learning process even more by enabling you to attack these two problems simultaneously using similar content. I encourage you to check out our Kickstarter page and support the project.  Like Duolingo, The Mimic Method app will be free once it’s up and running, but only backers will receive the personalized training.

If you learn the meanings with Duolingo, master the sounds with The Mimic Method, and collect the context by putting yourself out there Benny Lewis-style, you’ll achieve fluency in your next language faster than you could with any other system. Don’t believe me?  Just Google it

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How to Learn a Language like Google is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!

Have you seen my TEDx talk? You can get much better details of how I recommend learning a language if you watch it here.

As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip) to read two chapters free of charge!

My girlfriend learns Esperanto: Week 2 update and spontaneous conversation! [video]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzDNjJo1g2Q

Time for another progress update on the makings of a new polyglot… from scratch! We are recording literally every single second of language learning and use of the language, so the greatest realizations can be caught on camera.

The goal of this week was initially to get comfortable using the language in other senses, like communicating via email with people.

I have been coaching Lauren, rather than teaching her, and wanted her to get exposure to Esperanto in as many ways as possible other than talking to me, to give her similar conditions to any other learner. I rarely ever translate things for her, and mostly answer her questions with another question to help her find the answer herself better.

You can see an example in this video when she asks me what the Esperanto for “book” is. It would do more harm than good to simply be her walking dictionary, since I want her to continue progressing as independently as possible, and not rely on me beyond general guidance.

First ever spoken opportunity!

After about 14 hours of study (what you could also do in 2 or 3 intensive days of work), we are pretty much ready for her to comfortably have plenty of conversations, limited as they may be, so that she can improve her spoken skills. The end of the project in Berlin won’t be the first time she’ll have spoken!! She’s following a spoken-based approach once she has basic familiarity with the language.

So, I was planning to get her into speaking from next week, but after my book signing event in Dublin, an Esperanto speaking friend of mine, Ruslan, showed up and spoke to her in Esperanto! This was totally unexpected, so I got out my camera and recorded it! You can see that in the video above.

Lauren’s own thoughts

The biggest problem Lauren is having this week now is difficulty in remember verbs, even though Memrise and Anki help her a lot for all other types of words. At this stage, we are pretty sure that what’s missing is simply using the words in context much more, which is why she ended up reading and even writing Esperanto this week!

Next week, I’ll start using Esperanto with her throughout the day so that she is more immersed. Since we are taking this first project very lightly, I wanted to ease her in, in her first weeks, but now that she has some basic comfort in the language, things can get interesting

That’s what I think though – it’s time for Lauren’s own thoughts on how things are going this week!

———

“After we posted the video last week on Benny’s blog, I was surprised to see that I got two messages from readers wishing me luck with Esperanto, via Lernu. It took me a while to respond to those messages, but it was really good practice and eased me into “talking” with other speakers for the first time.”

“Even better– I also got one message from a Lernu community member who had messaged me just because he saw I was a new sign up on Lernu! He sent me a message saying that he was just recently getting back into Esperanto himself, and we decided to be writing partners! So I got to practice socializing with him in a really easy, low pressure way. I wasn’t even looking for an exchange partner just yet, but the Esperanto community is so friendly that I found one without even trying.”

“One frustration I’m having this week, and that I still haven’t solved, is that I’m having a hard time remembering and even recognizing very common verbs, like to say, to do, to make, to want, etc. When reading sentences in my courses and in writing to my exchange partner, I understand nearly all the nouns and adjectives, but I keep mixing up all the verbs. I’ve tried studying them on Memrise and Anki, but it’s not sinking in. So this is going to be my primary focus for next week, because you NEED verbs to form sentences, and right now not being able to pull up even the simplest verbs I need is really making me feel like I can’t yet communicate much in Esperanto.”

“But Benny has asked me to focus on what I CAN do now this week rather than what I still can’t do, so I have to admit that I’ve already noticed a huge improvement in my pronunciation, and I’m starting to be able to talk my way through full sentences much faster, with what is starting to become a flow (though I still don’t know what all the words mean… but I’m stumbling over my words a lot less).”

“I’m also noticing that my confidence in speaking and writing certain sentences that I use a lot has increased, especially from sending just a few messages to other Esperanto speakers on Lernu.”

“One last thing that I did this week that actually helped me a LOT unexpectedly–I started building a “cheat sheet” when I came across vocabulary words I thought I’d need to know to form basic sentences right now. While I was building my cheat sheet, I started to see similarities in the ways certain types of words were put together that I hadn’t noticed before. For instance, all the words that start with “every” (everything, everyone, everywhere) start with “cxi,” and a lot of time-related words like today, yesterday, soon and before end in “aux.” I never would have noticed this if I hadn’t started writing out a cheat list, and this has helped me a LOT with understanding the logic behind the language and in being able to guess new words.”

——

Thanks Lauren! I hope you enjoyed this week’s update – let us know your thoughts in the comments, and stay tuned to see her improvement over the coming weeks!

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My girlfriend learns Esperanto: Week 2 update and spontaneous conversation! is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!

Have you seen my TEDx talk? You can get much better details of how I recommend learning a language if you watch it here.

As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip) to read two chapters free of charge!

How to create a realistic timeline for your next language project (Why 3 months?)

As I continue on the book tour, I have been getting asked many questions face-to-face with people, many of which remind me of things that I can talk about on the blog more.

One of the biggest ones by far is Why 3 months?

You see it in the title of the blog and the book – where did I come up with that number? Did I study astronomy to see how many lunar rotations around the earth increase brain capacity? Did I find the magic number of hours, divide it by 8 a day, and come up with 90 days? Am I obsessed with the number 3?

It’s actually way simpler than that: I have been a full-time traveller for 11 years, and for most of that time I have been visiting a country as a tourist, where the visa limit for tourists is 3 months.

Three months is literally all the time that I had to learn the language. That’s where the number comes from.

Necessity has driven me into this 3-month limit, and routine has kept me there – even when I’m in the EU where I can stay indefinitely, I’ve found that with time 3-month-deadlines work for me. They are in the Goldilock’s zone of not-too-little time not-too-much time that you can make a major difference in your level, but still not get exhausted if you are doing it intensively.

How to get the “magic number”

So how do you find your own realistic timeline for when you should finish up your next language project? I do definitely think we need a deadline to make a major difference whenever possible. When you can set aside a few weeks or months to genuinely FOCUS on your project, you will do something way more important than studying it when you have the time over the long-term.

But there is no magic number. I don’t think 3-months works for everybody. I can only suggest it. You have to have a good reason to have a timelime to work with, and if 3-months is arbitrary for you, it won’t work so effectively.

If on the other hand, you have school/university holidays or way less work over the summer, then maybe you should consider a 3 month project. It fits with your lifestyle, and with the deadline of when you know you’ll be busy again.

2 or 6 weeks for Esperanto?

As you can see now, the new mission on the blog is to coach my girlfriend to learn Esperanto in 6 weeks. This wasn’t a number picked out of thin air, but a suggestion by Judith, who happens to prefer 6-week challenges that she encourages language learners to get into.

This particular project has the extra motivation that at the end of the six weeks, some people in the challenge will meet up in Berlin and have a chance to use their learned language. My girlfriend is motivated by the opportunity to try to socialize in another language for the first time.

This keeps her motivated to put the time in, even if it’s just an hour or so a day, but it’s a short enough timespan that she won’t get exhausted or sick of it for a first project.

I’ve also suggested 2 weeks for learning Esperanto to people. This is because in that context I know that people considering the project are not actually interested in Esperanto itself or using it (to socialize for instance), but just for the “springboard” advantage. In this case, I think it’s a short-enough timespan that it’s not a huge sacrifice for people to make, but still long enough to get into it enough to have a conversation or two.

What about me, Benny?

If you are reading this and don’t know what timeline you should choose yet, then try to see if you can find a combination of a major achievement you can make, a realistic timeline in which you could achieve it if you gave it your best effort, and more importantly something specific to aim for.

As an example, ask yourself if you have any of the following coming up any time soon:

Trip abroad to a country that speaks the language
Visit from a family member that speaks that language
Exam in the language
A conference/concert/event with lots of people that may include those from your country of interest
A certain period of time during which you are less busy than normal (holidays, big project at work finished etc.)

Whenever that thing is happening, or whenever the period is due to be over that is the best possible timeline for you. I don’t care how long it is, as long as it’s not years from now (that’s way too far off to process realistically with a “mission” mentality).

Next, what do you aim for? It depends on where you are now, and what you think you could aim for given a particular timeline. I personally like to base my project goals on the European Common Framework levels.

You can also aim for a definite thing that you can do, like have a one minute conversation with someone, or get by as a confident tourist, or learn words related to this theme that you are likely to discuss.

As such, instead of “Fluent in 3 Months”, you can take that mission mentality and have projects like

Be a confident tourist by next weekend
Have a basic conversation within a month
Be able to socialize basically within 6 weeks
Be able to have most conversations within 4 months
Pass the C2 exam within 8 months, starting from B2.

Whichever works for your situation, and your goals, and your realistic outcomes. I do suggest you aim a little higher though, don’t be so realistic that you’d have to be asleep for the next months for it to not come true!

————

I hope that makes sense! If you have your own life situation that means that 1 month or 6 months is a much better goal, then go for that instead. Make your goals fit your lifestyle, rather than a number that you apply just because someone told you it’s ideal. You know what’s ideal for you!

Do share your own #fi3m projects, whatever they may be, with us in the comments! In a few weeks, when the summer holidays are in full swing, I’ll try to get as many of you as I can to do your own three month projects! But I also look forward to find out about your 1 week, 2 month, 3 fortnight and whatever other projects you may have

Best of luck!!

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How to create a realistic timeline for your next language project (Why 3 months?) is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!

Have you seen my TEDx talk? You can get much better details of how I recommend learning a language if you watch it here.

As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip) to read two chapters free of charge!

Week 1 of a monoglot’s first language learning journey (Benny coaches his girlfriend to learn Esperanto)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHPC5DN4eJA

Time to finally meet the girl I searched the world for! We actually enjoy one another’s company for many reasons, and language learning had nothing to do with it. She was actually a monoglot…. until today!

Since I’m too busy on my book tour and maintaining my languages this year to learn a new language, she said that she would love to get into language learning herself. Thinking long-term though, I highly recommended that she start with Esperanto. It also turns out that a group of other people are learning Esperanto at the same time, with the deadline of the polyglot conference in Berlin, so we ran with that idea!

Like myself, she is working a lot as well as moving home almost every single day on this tour, so she could only invest 1-2 hours a day, but we are using this time to prepare to socialize in the language by June, and I hope you will enjoy seeing her progress!

EVERY second of language learning documented!

I have had many language learning projects myself, but this one is the first one that I get to document of another person. Lauren, my girlfriend, had the great idea that we should have the camera rolling every single second that she is studying, speaking, using or otherwise getting some kind of exposure to Esperanto.

Over the space of 6 days we had over seven and a half hours of footage, and I edited the best realizations down into today’s 13 minute video (above). I hope you enjoy it! This way you can see the gradual but definite progress of a genuine beginner language learner to a more confident speaker, from start to finish.

Don’t forget to activate subtitles on Youtube to follow along with everything. Subtitles are in English and Esperanto

Lauren’s own thoughts on week 1

The video focuses on my observations of her own progress (as a voice-over), but a lot of you wanted to know things from my girlfriend’s perspective! As well as her thoughts in the video, she has contributed to today’s blog post! Here you go (everything in quotation marks was written by her!):

“When I first started out, I initially felt overwhelmed by all the possible ways I could start.

I was worried about picking the perfect materials to start with, even though from listening to Benny talk to language learners all the time, I know that there’s really no such thing, and that you just have to jump into it, but with such a huge task in front of you and so much to do, it’s a really hard feeling to shake.

Feeling “dumb” and awkward in starting out

Another silly thing that happened, and that I didn’t expect, was that I felt very shy to practice sounding out the Esperanto words in front of Benny, since he was in the room, is fluent in the language, and would be able to hear each and every once of my (many many) mistakes.

It feels so awkward to start forming these brand new sounds, and I felt completely inept starting out, because I literally didn’t know how to do ANYTHING in the language. Every word, every letter was a challenge. I hear people tell Benny all the time that they feel “dumb” or childish when starting to speak a new language, and I completely experienced this feeling myself knowing that I was butchering the language in front of him.”

—–

The way she got over that was … just to keep doing it!

After a while, she felt more and more comfortable practising her words and sentences out loud, and now she talks away to herself while I’m in the room, and without trying to be quiet enough that I can’t hear

—-

Being bored

“One thing that surprised me was how tired I felt once I started each one of my learning sessions. I guess I was using new parts of my brain that I don’t generally use… I’m not really sure what it was, but I joked with Benny that he could make an entire video just of clips of me yawning.”

—–

I like to call this “brain melting” and it happens to me all the time too This tiredness hits her after every intensive session.

One major issue we had on day one though, within her first hour, was that she was already starting to get bored! This was a problem–and in language learning, if whatever you are doing is truly boring you and sapping your motivation, then you need to change your approach.

In her case, she discovered that the first Lernu! course that she started with (Bildoj kaj Demandoj) didn’t work for her learning style (it was more of a Rosetta Stone style images-based course with no translations or explanations), and as soon as she switched to a different beginner’s course, Ana Pana, she got much more into it, and boredom wasn’t a problem for the rest of the week!

——

Mini-mission of the week:

“One of the first things I did during my starting hours were to jump into learning phrases from the course, because I wanted to learn to say things right away. But I kept forgetting how to pronounce the letters of the Esperanto alphabet, because they have an “s”and a “ŝ” which make different sounds, for example, and I kept confusing them.”

—-

This pronunciation problem was holding Lauren back when she tried to learn and pronounce new words, and this is the perfect example of when a “mini-mission” should be used. To solve this problem and allow her to move on, she spent some time focusing only on mastering the phonetic pronunciation.

I was able to coach her in a really efficient way to do this. Her first instinct was to pull up the Esperanto Alphabet and start pronouncing each letter one by one, to hopefully memorize their sounds by rote repetition.

But I intervened here and suggested a much more interesting way to practice her pronunciation that also allowed her to use the language. I had her go to the Wikipedia home page, and then search for a topic (for this we chose to read about her home town) while changing the language to Esperanto. I then asked her to read the first part of the article so that she could practice pronouncing the letters as they were used the context of real sentences and words.

—-

“I discovered a lot about myself as a learner this week. For one, I’m much more impatient than I imagined I would be! I got tired very quickly of doing the same task for a long period of time, so I had to set up 3 or 4 different activities that I could turn to when one started to get tiring to keep my brain fresh.”

—-

Thanks for that Lauren! You’ll be hearing (and seeing!) much more from her in the coming weeks

An important part of the first week for Lauren was to bounce between different exercises to keep things interesting. So she alternated between working on the Ana Pana course on Lernu!, building her vocabulary and developing memory aids on Memrise, practising her phrases with me, and reading random articles in Esperanto on Wikipedia to practise her pronunciation.

Resources we used this week

The main resources Lauren used this week were:

Forvo
Memrise
Wikipedia
Lernu! courses, dictionary, and live chat features

Forvo, Memrise and Wikipedia are helpful for learning ANY language–definitely not just Esperanto.

Forvo was especially important for Lauren’s first week, as she found it very frustrating to read new words without knowing how they sounded. She said that being unsure of how to pronounce new words while also not knowing their meanings was too much uncertainty and made her feel overwhelmed.

For this problem, Forvo is one of the best resources. Their website allows you to search for any word in a large number of languages and hear the way the word is pronounced. Though Lernu! courses also provide soundbites, our internet connection was slow that day, so the long full-sentence sound clips on Lernu! weren’t working well, and Lauren often turned to Forvo as a very helpful alternative when she just had to know how to pronounce a single word before she felt comfortable forward.

Memrise helped her to remember Esperanto vocabulary when simply repeating new words and their translations wasn’t making them stick. Memrise helped her remember that Seka means Dry (Her mnemonic was “In the DRY desert, water evaporates in a SEKond”), and that Vespero means Evening (“In the evening, you need to be quiet and whispero”).

Esperanto-specific resources

Lernu! is the best website I know of for learning Esperanto. Their site offers a range of free online Esperanto courses, vocabulary lists, grammar exercises, a great dictionary, and many other resources. We used this site every day.

Lauren’s favorite course to start on Lernu! was Ana Pana, which taught her new words and phrases and then had her use what she’d just learned to produce her own phrases. The first course she tried, Bildoj kaj Demandoj, didn’t work as well for her learning style, because it uses an Esperanto-only approach with no English translations, which is popular with a lot of learners, but didn’t keep Lauren’s focus.

Lernu! intentionally provides this range of different materials so that it can help people with totally different learning styles, and from this initial mis-step Lauren learned early on that you need to experiment–but not give up!–when a particular approach doesn’t work well for you at first!

Lauren also used the Esperanto dictionary on the Lernu! site several times to create new sentences she wanted to say, and she even used the Live Chat feature right on the Lernu! homepage (although she found it intimidating at first) to have a fluent speaker correct the self-introduction she made for the start of this video! She simply learned to type in, “Hello, is this sentence good?” and then pasted in her sentence, and got an immediate correction from friendly and helpful Esperantists!

Moving forward

On day 5 of week one, we already had a sort-of conversation, based on an exercise she had done that day. She was ready for this conversation before I expected! But we ended the week with an intro to the video she would record, and prepare herself and with the help of people she found online.

Over the next weeks, we’ll start talking more in Esperanto, hopefully Skyping some people, and if things go according to plan, by mid-June she’ll be ready to socialize for the first time in her life not using English!

I hope you enjoyed this update. Do share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

 

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Week 1 of a monoglot’s first language learning journey (Benny coaches his girlfriend to learn Esperanto) is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!

Have you seen my TEDx talk? You can get much better details of how I recommend learning a language if you watch it here.

As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip) to read two chapters free of charge!

How to automate your language learning (IFTTT)

Always one for interesting ideas, I was glad to see this suggestion from Aaron of Language Classes on how to automate language learning, especially using the quickly expanding IFTTT tool, among others. Check out his unique ideas here!

Over to you Aaron:

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One of the biggest challenges for students of any foreign language is finding the time to study.

Many of us have started, stopped and restarted learning a foreign language several times. After a long day at school or work, chores, meals, and maybe a workout we often feel unmotivated or lack the time to study. One of the best ways to find time to study is to use technology to automate your language study.

Benny is obviously a huge proponent of finding the most efficient to learn languages and has many posts about hacking your studies. One way I like to “hack” my time, is to automate the process of language learning in as many ways as I can.

How to Automate!

Here are two tools I’ve found and think are useful. Please leave your comments if you’ve found other tools or methods of using these same tools for learning.

IFTTT – If this then that is a website that allows you to do basic programming without any programming knowledge.

It allows you to schedule tasks based on events or time. For instance, every time you get an email from a specific email address or with the word “Spanish” in the subject line you can program IFTTT to then send you a text message. There are dozens of applications that you can integrate IFTTT with including your email, text messages, RSS readers, FB groups, or Instagram as a few examples.

When you create an if-then command on IFTTT it is called a recipe. You can search other peoples recipes, create your own and if you want share them with others. There are endless possibilities. Even if you don’t find language specific ones you can use someone else’s base recipe and just change the details, such as to download a podcast.

Here is an example:

Download Language Podcast

https://ifttt.com/recipes/45354-podcast-esl-to-my-dropbox

You need to first subscribe to the podcast of your choice using an RSS reader. I like www.feedly.com

Then create a recipe in IFTTT that says:

If a new podcast (podcast name from RSS reader) then text my phone #. Or: email me, download the file to my google drive, soundcloud, or dropbox.

Read Blog Post

https://ifttt.com/recipes/163788-fluent-in-3-months-blog-updates

If you want to get updated every time any other language blogger posts another great blog post you can use the recipe I shared above. Just sign up for ifttt then click use recipe and its is all done for you.

Use can use this similar recipe to subscribe to word-of-the-day websites, blogs, youtube channels, and podcasts.

You can even instruct ifttt to include the downloaded file in the email if you like.

More recipe ideas

Reminders – You can create reminders based on dates or times to remind you to study. The difference between this and a calendar or alarm is you can instruct it to notify you in many different ways.
Save for later – Using the youtube, rss, or even twitter apps you can save items to use later. This is great for when you find something interesting but don’t have time to review it right away.
Hashtags – If you want to learn slang, twitter is a great tool. Find out common hashtags that are used on twitter by Spanish speakers then setup a recipe to add their tweets to a google doc so you can study them later.

Video Instruction on How to Use IFTTT

Here’s a list of great podcasts, youtube channels, and websites you may want to subscribe to if you are learning Spanish. You can use IFTTT to manage and send you the new content.

http://www.letutor.com/blog/spanish-resources/

Another Great Tool

Many of you know know about Anki, the flashcard tool that allows you to create and review flash cards.

Anki uses the Spaced Repetition system that emphasizes consistent review of vocabulary over time versus intensive study. Anki has a large user base and there are many “decks” that are already made for languages that you can download or you can create your own. You can download someone else’s deck to get started and then begin to customize it by removing words you don’t want and keeping the ones you do want.

The only problems with Anki are that it can be a bit user unfriendly and the iOS app is expensive.

An alternative to this is a great app that works with your smartphone or computer browser (available for Chrome, Chrome for IOS, and Safari IOS), ReadLang.

The ReadLang app helps you create and review flashcards just like Anki but it also brings some automation to the process. ReadLang works in your browser and allows you to select any text, video, audio, or web link and add it to a flashcard. So, as you are reading or studying, like you normally would, and you see a new word you want to remember or you would like to know in a foreign language you can simply highlight it and ReadLang will create a new flashcard.

ReadLang saves you time by streamlining the process of creating a flashcard. Cards are created in the moment instead of having to stop what you are doing and open a new application to create a card or trying to remember at a later time. The greatest time saver is that ReadLang will automatically translate the words for you and will create a flashcard with the new word and the correct translation and definition.

This will streamline and automate your study time instead of spending more time creating resources than actually studying. Not to mention that ReadLang includes the same great flashcard review system as Anki and you have them on your phone anywhere you go.

If you prefer to still use Anki’s software ReadLang can export your library of flashcards and is compatible with Anki.

ReadLang Demonstration

Conclusion

This is not a complete list of ways you can automate your language learning process. However, it should get you thinking of ways you can simplify and automate your language studies.

The options are endless and you have probably already found your own little life hacks for learning. Please share your thoughts and ideas with everyone in the comments. If you like this article let us know so we can bring you more great ideas.

If you liked the article, we’re planning to publish a lot of great articles like this one once we launch our blog at www.LanguageClasses.com. We invite you to become an early bird by joining our newsletter and get all the good stuff when the time comes. We’ll give you some free language learning materials once we launch

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How to automate your language learning (IFTTT) is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!

Have you seen my TEDx talk? You can get much better details of how I recommend learning a language if you watch it here.

As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip) to read two chapters free of charge!

New language mission! [video]

Since I’m not learning a new language this year, it’s hard to have a language mission, right? Well, see this video to find out what my next language mission, for the next six weeks, is going to be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-kJTnGEd_E

You should be subscribed to my new Fluent in 3 Months channel to get updates on this. Share your thoughts on this in the comments below. The mission has already started today!

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New language mission! is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!

Have you seen my TEDx talk? You can get much better details of how I recommend learning a language if you watch it here.

As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip) to read two chapters free of charge!

Time to Level Up! Examples of how you can use your language anywhere

The most famous example people know of me (and my friend Moses) levelling up, is when we went to a mall in Columbus Ohio and spoke over a dozen languages.

I’ve had people email me to ask where are good places to level up, as if a list can be compiled. Actually, you can do this anywhere. Let me give you several examples today!

Mandarin in a fishing village… in Ireland

I decided to take a break from my intensive book tour and spent a few days last weekend at the edge of the Gaeltacht in Ireland, in a fishing village called Killybegs (Na Cealla Beaga). While I did drive into the Gaeltacht and speak Irish, something interesting happened on my last evening back in the village.

I went for a jog into the countryside yesterday (with my phone speaking to me in German to update me on my pace and distance remaining- more on how I use my multilingual resources coming up on my new Youtube channel, and on fi3mplus.com), and on the last stretch when I was coming back into the road entering town, I saw two lost tourists.

One of them was looking back at me waiting until I arrived to ask a question, so I slowed down and took out my earphones and he greeted me and asked me in English with a very strong Chinese accent if I could help him find the supermarket.

Not one to miss out on an opportunity, I hazarded a guess Nǐmen shì zhōngguó rén ma? [Are you Chinese?] And he replied shì! with an astonished smile. His father, who was walking along with him in a very Chinese hands-folded-behind-him-leaning-forward-keeping-his-eyes-on-the-road way, on hearing Mandarin, suddenly turned to me and looked at me like I had suddenly materialized out of thin air!

Without batting an eyelid, I started telling him that to go to the chāoshì, he had to yìzhízŏu (keep going straight) and then zài guăi jiăo (at the corner) wàng zuŏ guăi (turn left) liǎng cì (twice) – although I used different word order from what I remembered, to keep the time sooner in the sentence. I was still jogging on the spot at this stage and panting a little, and sort of thinking in a half Irish, half German daydream, but didn’t give myself time to think about things, and burst into Mandarin that I hadn’t spoken in a while despite the rustiness.

It’s a good thing they ran into me, because he told me that he just walked straight out from his hotel and thought he’d find something in this direction, and he would have gone the 5K I had just jogged, the long way into town without some intervention! We talked about how I had learned Mandarin in Taiwan and then travelled China by train. A very nice, and unexpected chat and a great chance to level up my Mandarin!

Hungarian in Spain

A few days before I was to start my Japanese project, I went to an Erasmus party with my friend Scott in Valencia. This was a great event because there were people there for me to practise Dutch, German, French and a lot of Italian with (and you know, some Spanish too of course!)

The funniest of all though, was when I spoke to a couple who were from Hungary. I hadn’t spoken Hungarian properly in years, but I did have a mini-project a few months before to revive what I knew, so I had some still relatively fresh in my mind and broke it out to ask them how their Spanish learning was going… in Hungarian.

I’ve never seen jaws drop so much. I think people who consider their languages the hardest, like Hungarians and Poles are especially impressed when you know anything in their language. They consider even the basics to be impenetrable! The funny thing is that I could barely remember anything and was just saying a few basic phrases, but the couple ran off to get another Hungarian to come and watch this “show”.

People just love to get surprised and see you speak their language in unexpected places!

Esperanto in England

Back to recently, and on this book tour again, I’ve been surprised by Esperanto in England! I joined forces with those at Memrise and we had a joint meet-up in London, and one of the readers who knew who I was immediately said hello in Esperanto to me – in this case it was him levelling up with me. Nice to have the tables turned!

But shortly after, in Cambridge, I recognized a familiar face in the audience who has promoted Esperanto himself so I took the chance when he said he had a question, and told him to ask it in Esperanto!

Even outside of England, Fi3M’s official full-time encourager Brandon has told me that as soon as he put on his polyglot t-shirt for his site photo, he was spoken to in Esperanto. I’ve had a few people email me to tell me that they have levelled up thanks to their t-shirts telling the world which languages to practise with them!

———–

This is just a tiny fraction of some experiences that I have regularly in getting to practise my target languages outside of the countries they are spoken in, and the stories I hear of others doing the same.

Since the book came out, many others have heard about Moses’ levelling up, and have emulated his fun experiences on their own. I love receiving these stories in my inbox!

You just need to keep your eyes open, be willing to not be shy and use what you have, even if it’s rusty or basic, and you can level up and remind yourself how languages are a living thing.

Give it a try yourself – and share your own levelling up stories with us in the comments! Can’t wait to read them

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Time to Level Up! Examples of how you can use your language anywhere is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!

Have you seen my TEDx talk? You can get much better details of how I recommend learning a language if you watch it here.

As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip) to read two chapters free of charge!

New How-To video series: Language Learning resources (& 6 week Esperanto challenge)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih67nqyLEkg

[Note: A better version of this video with louder audio has been uploaded to fi3mplus.com. You can sign up to that site for free using your copy of the published edition of Fluent in 3 Months. Members of PREMIUM can also access this video along with the entire new video series that will follow!]

After months of book tours, and enough of a work backlog that I’ve had to hire full-time help, it’s finally time for me to get back into making videos again!

Since this year I’ve decided to focus on improving the languages I already know, I wanted to give you a look into the process of how I go about slowly improving my languages over the long term, maintaining them, and pushing myself into mastery in my top languages.

As such, I’ll be making a heap of new videos that I can produce with much more consistency than I ever did during my hectic intensive learning projects!

This video series will focus on showing all of you exactly how to use (and how I use) the online tools I recommend. I’ll try to give it a good range–giving detailed instructions for total newbies, as well as some more advanced tips and tricks for those of you already using these materials (and of course letting you in on my own personal strategies).

So please, give me lots of requests and feedback in the comments below! What new videos do you want to see? What resources do you find tricky, or do you want to see me in action with?

Some of these videos will be available to those who follow my new Youtube channel (this is for how-to videos in English; my original channel is for videos of me using the languages I’ll be maintaining), and previews and full versions of new videos will be posted to my new site, fi3mplus.com, which is FREE for book-owners to access. (With full-length versions of all videos available on Fi3m PREMIUM).

Upcoming 6 week Esperanto / 3 month all-language challenges: What will yours be?

Also: SUMMER is approaching! This means warm weather, approaching holidays, and for some of us, a bit of time off… so what better time to start a new language learning mission!

Sometime around June I’m going to be encouraging all of you to take on your own three month challenge, and to share your progress with me here on the blog. Even though I’m not learning a new language myself this year, I may be helping certain people one-on-one much more with their own challenges (More on that soon ;) I’ll be keeping the details to myself for a while, although members of the email list already got this inside scoop today!)

But first, to get you started– here’s some info on a short six week challenge coming up soon that can really give you the ammunition you need to get further in any other language you may consider harder.

Judith over at learnlangs.com, has informed me that she is starting up a new six week challenge and is inviting people to learn Esperanto intensively! You can win prizes for your efforts, and present your results either online, or at the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin.

As I’ve said myself, and as fellow TEDx speaker Tim has confirmed, Esperanto can be a great “springboard” to helping you learn other languages faster. So if you haven’t managed to get far in language learning yet, I highly recommend you give the easiest language a try to get that confidence you’d need in other languages!

I’m looking forward to “taking part” (in my own way :D) in these challenges with you this summer, and in seeing all of your results!

Thanks for reading, see you all on the book tour (in Ireland for the next month), and happy language learning!

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New How-To video series: Language Learning resources (& 6 week Esperanto challenge) is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!

Have you seen my TEDx talk? You can get much better details of how I recommend learning a language if you watch it here.

As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip) to read two chapters free of charge!

New member of the Fi3M team: Brandon, your full-time language encourager!

Quick note: I’ve just arrived in Belfast and am starting my Northern Ireland / Republic of Ireland book tour for the next month. Make sure to sign up to a city/town near you here!

Fluent in 3 Months is constantly expanding, and is now reaching almost 1 MILLION visitors per month! This year things are expanding very quickly, since the book hit the shelves and subsequently became an international best seller!

This of course, leads to many questions coming my way from aspiring language learners. It reached the stage where I would get a thousand emails a day sometimes!!

Sadly, I only have so many hours in a day and most of these emails would have to go unanswered, and my blogging and Youtubing frequency has been suffering too with all the extra work from the growth of the blog. This year, because I’m on a book tour and moving city almost every day, offline most of the time, I was starting to realize that keeping up with everything by myself would be simply impossible.

Official Language Encourager

That’s why I’m glad to announce that Brandon Rivington has joined the team! When I made this little request that I was looking for help, I got HUNDREDS of applications from an incredibly wide range of extremely impressive applicants.

It was a very hard choice, but we went with Brandon because we felt he was the best fit for the job.

Here is his own intro:

I am a life-long language learner and enthusiast from New York, NY!  I’ve been learning languages since the age of 10 and most of it has been without the aid of teachers.  I speak (to varying degrees) English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Latin, Slovak, and Esperanto and I’ve dabbled in many more in the past.  When I’m not “languageing”, I love ice hockey and traveling.  I’m here to help you get to where you want to be in whatever language(s) you are learning.  So if there are any questions you may have about learning languages in general or about any specific language, just let me know! 

He will be working every single day to:

Answer your emails to give language learners as much direct one-on-one encouragement as possible, and answer your language learning questions
Researching blogs, news updates, social media, and your suggestions emailed/tweeted to us to send the absolute best language learning news and resources updates to the Language Hacking League email list, every week, as well as sharing a few of them on my social media. I’m really excited about this one, because there was no single good resource for finding the best language learning news until now!
Interact with people through comments on Facebook, Youtube, blog posts and twitter. I hear from so many of you on these streams every single day and am so glad that you can finally get good replies! When you get a reply from “Fluent in 3 Months” on Facebook, Youtube, twitter or Google+ then it could be from Brandon or me (or a couple of other part-time encouragers).
Remove spam and trolling from Facebook/Youtube/forum/blog comments to keep conversations on-topic and friendly
Feedback on the direction the blog and entire brand is moving in, to help me make sure we are expanding in a way that is as helpful as possible to people
Give me suggestions based on his research and emails, on blog posts that need to be written, and videos that need to be recorded

When he replies to you, you can rest assured that it’s similar to something I would have said myself, or better. He gives GREAT advice! He also knows my blog inside and out, and knows what I would say and can refer you to my posts or videos when relevant.

Test him out, and use our contact form (under “Language Encouragement”)! And if you come across any interesting language news yourself, make sure to tweet @fluentin3months or use the “Share a link” option on the contact page. (Obviously, we look at promotional links very critically)

Even more team members joining

Brandon is just one of several people who is going to be working full or part time to help improve several aspects of Fluent in 3 Months, both the back-end, and direct language learner interaction.

I’ll tell you about these other team members soon too!

More time for me to get active again!

Each member of the team has a very important task that they can do better than me, so that I can do what I do best and record more videos and write more fun blog posts, and encourage language learners in person on this book tour.

In fact, since the team has started (and especially since Brandon began this week), I’ve had enough help to catch up on a major chunk of my email backlog, and it has even allowed me to take my first weekend off all year. Yes, I’ve been so busy with book things and constant travel, that I’ve literally not even had a single day off in months! Constant travel isn’t as glamorous as you would think! (More on this soon…)

Now that I’ve got help, I can both make sure the Fluent in 3 Months community gets the interaction it deserves, while I also stay sane by getting help with the workload this site sends me

As well as this, it also means that I can work on other projects to expand and improve the site, and get back into making new videos, practising all my languages and creating fun new things to encourage the world to learn languages. More fun news coming soon!

I hope you’ll all welcome your new Language Encourager!

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New member of the Fi3M team: Brandon, your full-time language encourager! is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!

Have you seen my TEDx talk? You can get much better details of how I recommend learning a language if you watch it here.

As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip) to read two chapters free of charge!