http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x2_kWRB8-A

Please watch this and then copy and paste this link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x2_kWRB8-A

(or short-link http://youtu.be/0x2_kWRB8-A )

to your Facebook wall, or to Google+, twitter or your other favourite social media source. If you’re too busy to watch it now, copy and paste it anyway and then you have an easy place to find it later when you do have time! O:)

I really hope this new and improved TEDx talk will get lots of views, inspire many new language learners and even be considered to be used in the main TED stream to ultimately reach millions!

Even though you may be well aware of my language learning advice, this video shares a new aspect of why I failed at my first attempt to learn Spanish which I have not discussed on the blog yet, and I go through the five most commonly used reasons why adults don’t learn languages and explain ways around them. It also includes clips of the most impressive polyglot videos online within the talk!

Background of new talk

A couple of years ago, I gave a TEDx talk in San Antonio, to try encourage language learners. There were a few problems with this though: it was the second time in my entire life on stage, and as such I hesitated a lot and it came across as less professional.

I also made it all up on the spot without any preparation and didn’t cover points I had wanted to when I saw my time running out. As well as this, when the video was uploaded, they misspelled my name as Bennie in the unchangeable imprint into the video and the title of the video was the verbose and confusing one of “TEDxSanAntonio – Benny Lewis – Fluent in Three Months – Rapid Language Hacking”.

And finally, the “Tengo la camisa negra” t-shirt was a little distracting.

With all this in mind, and with a few years of speaking experience under my belt, it was time for my second attempt at the TEDx stage, at Warsaw!

I think it worked out a lot better this time! I prepared my talk in advance, so I was much more confident, ran it through a few people for feedback (including a friend of mine, Derek Sivers who is an experienced TED talker), I implemented images and several videos into the talk so that it flows a lot better, and rather than do it alone, those in the videos are actually polyglot cameos (several from the Skype me Maybe music video). Despite all this the video is shorter than the first one!

So do check it out, and let me know what you think of it in the comments below. Please do share it with your friends, because I think it’s the most compressed form of intensive language learning encouragement that I have made to date, and what I hope to be among the most encouraging videos for struggling language learners that you’ll find online!

Thanks a million!

----------------------------
“Hacking language learning”: My new and improved TEDx talk that includes the best polyglot videos online. Please share!! 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!

The post “Hacking language learning”: My new and improved TEDx talk that includes the best polyglot videos online. Please share!! appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

The great thing about blogging, compared to traditional print media, is that you can update posts as often as you like. With that in mind, I’ve decided to make this the go-to page for the most comprehensive list of completely free online resources for learning and practising many languages, that you may find online!

I will constantly be coming back to this post to make sure it is up to date with the latest and best links.

If I have missed anything (within reason, please see the note at the end) definitely let me know in the comments and I’ll add it in! I’m only interested in sharing a site on this page if it has a genuinely useful 100% free aspect to it (although some of these pages may have other paid aspects to them or ads). If at any time in the future these links become less useful, also let me know and I’ll remove them

Also note that for the purposes of keeping the number of links that can appear on this page under control, I won’t be including into any links that focus on just one language in this blog post.

For that please make a request or do a search in the forums. I’ll make a separate post later for sharing the best links for specific languages, but until then share your favourites with us in the forums. For instance, here is a thread about watching videos in French, or here is a long list of links for learning Chinese, this thread shares German links, this one is for Italian, and Dutch here. When you ask, those in the forum can also point you to other specific language link lists elsewhere online, such as this one for Spanish resources.

Alternatively use the Google search tool on the right, as various posts on this blog share my favourite links specific to one language, such as for Irish.

Here we go!

Courses

Duolingo - A recent newcomer, run by Luis von Ahn (interview I did with him in Spanish here). It encourages you to progress in learning languages through gamifying its lessons. Full review of it here. At the moment, it offers Spanish, English (for Spanish speakers), French, German, Portuguese and Italian and more languages are in beta and on the way soon.

The Foreign Service Institute has a varied list of courses

The Omniglot intro to languages has a great first overview of many languages, and follows it up with links to courses and other tools for that language.

BBC’s languages has a great mini-introduction to almost 40 different languages!

About.com has some interesting articles, courses and word lists for English as a second language, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin and Spanish.

Internet polyglot has some great courses and help to memorize words for many languages.

Language exchanges

italki – This is my favourite site by far to get language practice. I wrote a detailed review of it here, but in general it is the easiest site I have come across to search for natives interested in an exchange, and to schedule a Skype call with them with time-zone issues handled automatically. The language exchange aspect of the site is entirely free.

The sites Livemocha, and busuu are actually commercial sites with courses that I didn’t find useful, but both have large communities of people from across the world that you can contact directly to ask for their Skype details. Rosetta Stone’s “sharedtalk” actively discourages this (“Skype” is a banned word that is asterisked out whenever you mention it in discussions, which goes to show how restrictive they are), but is good for written chats in that language.

Verbling takes the model of “Chat roulette” and puts a language learning spin on it. Unlike alternatives, you don’t need to plan anything in advance – just show up and activate it and you’ll get a 5-minute chat with a native speaker as long as you help them with yours for 5 minutes too!

The Polyglot Club organizes regular meet-ups in major cities that allow you to practice many different languages. You can also contact users directly to ask for corrections of text or a language exchange.

Couchsurfing, meetup and Internations also have great regular meet-ups in the real world to practice specific languages, or to just hang out with an international crowd. Couchsurfing also lets you search their community per language for the city you are in, so you can message people directly to invite them out for a coffee and chat.

Other sites for finding a language exchange partner include My Language Exchange and Interpals.

Vocabulary learning

Memrise is one of the most versatile sites for providing pre-made mnemonics for vocabulary in a wide range of languages, which is always expanding since the system is open to people adding their own public vocabulary lists and suggestions in.

Ankiweb - while this works best as a smartphone app or program, there is also an online version you can use, and you can input pre-made decks of the most important words in that language from a huge database. More on Anki and its spaced repetition system here.

Quizlet is another flashcard based site with lots of language specific ones.

Practise reading your language

Learning With Texts is a free resource to input text you find somewhere online and then be able to click words for translations, adding them to an ever growing personal database of words you know and being able to export that to use in a flashcard program. I introduced it fully in a video here. You can also install the open source version of it offline yourself (quite hard if you don’t have some programming experience, so the online version I installed on this site with a user-friendly set up may be preferable for most).

Language learning content

While LingQ is a paid site for a tool that is essentially exactly the same as 100% free LWT (mentioned above, although admittedly, inspired by LingQ, which they aren’t happy about so LWT is also a “banned word” on that site), the good news is that you can still access tonnes of great native content in a bunch of languages entirely for free, which includes transcripts in many cases. Just sign up and download anything that looks interesting in your target language to listen to on your MP3 player, or copy the text to LWT.

The Extr@ series is a pseudo-comedy TV show that is very easy to follow for learners of the language. Different native actors act out the entire series that you can watch on Youtube in French, Spanish, German, and English.

Native content in the language

Tunein lets you listen to live streamed radio from all over the world! Pinpoint the country you want to hear, test out a few stations and then listen to your favourite(s) regularly.

Go to Alexa’s ranking of top websites per country and go to the country where your target language is official to see the most visited websites in that country, which of course will likely be in that language and have text, video or audio made for native speakers that you can go through.

Stumbleupon‘s toolbar has an option to “stumble” interesting websites in a particular language. The right language, and fun content to read/watch!

Non-English Wikipedias. When you need to look something up on Wikipedia, rather than doing it in your native language, see the article written in your target language! If you don’t know the translation, look up the article on the English Wikipedia, and then click the translation on the left if it is provided (which it is for a surprising number of articles!)

Language learning forums to get useful tips!

Fluent in 3 months forum - the forum on this site is one of the most active language learning forums online, with 20,000 members. In my experience, it is one of the most encouraging forums you will find online, but still has plenty of experienced learners ready to lend a hand to give you specific and practical advice to get you speaking asap!

How to learn any language forum – those who frequent this forum tend to lean more towards enjoying the technical aspects of language learning, or mastering the language, or the linguistic theory of language learning. The technology/coding on the forum itself is quite outdated, but the community there is very strong and helpful, and certainly very experienced!

Get it pronounced/corrected by a native speaker

Forvo is a great site if you come across a new word and would really like to hear how it’s pronounced by a native speaker. It has a huge database covering many languages that you can search and get an instant answer.

Rhinospike is better to hear how an entire sentence or even a couple of short paragraphs are pronounced by a native speaker. Submit your request and make sure to help fill those requests in your native language to have yours prioritized.

Lang 8 is a site where you can write text in a particular language, and pretty soon have natives look over it and give you great feedback. Highly recommended for improving your writing skills!

Language articles

The language learning subreddit and the linguistics subreddit both regularly share some fascinating links from the web of the latest articles and tools for language learning.  You can also use stumbleupon mentioned above, and set it to the linguistics category. Keep in mind though that linguistics is not necessarily relevant to language learning.

Multilingual dictionaries

Wordreference is one of my favourite sites to search for the meaning of words in French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, not just because of its free online database but also because of its forums where words not in the dictionary database can generally be found to have their own discussions for. The Portuguese dictionary generally words better when searching for a word from Spanish though, and it also covers German, Russian, Polish, Romanian, Czech, Greek, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic although the quality in a lot of these can be improved on in alternatives.

Bab.la is another dictionary for a bunch (24) of languages.

Google Translate – while it will mess things up a lot, as far as automatic translations go that are completely free, Google Translate certainly gets the job done pretty well. What I like about this is that it translates as you type so without waiting for an answer by pressing enter to open a new page, you can have a live discussion on Skype faster by looking up a word that extra bit quicker (although you’ll likely use a wrong translation a lot of the time unless you use more full sentences to give the system more context, as it takes its translations from human translations it has found elsewhere).

Proz term search , the Interactive Terminology for Europe and Mymemory were my go-to dictionaries when I worked as a professional translator, specifically for finding technical terminology that is less likely to appear in other general dictionaries.

What’s missing?

I’m very happy to regularly update this post to add in new links to great free resources for language learners! Just add in a comment below to let us know what you think is missing

Please keep in mind that this post is only for links to resources for multiple languages, so if you know of links that help with one language, then please share all of those links with us in the forums! If you give enough good links, or others do in reply to your request, I’ll refer to your forum post in a later blog post about specific languages.

Also, I am only discussing websites in this post, and we’ll get into the best apps or language learning software (although, don’t forget to get a copy of Language Ninja…) another day! I’ll have a look at each link you include in the comments, but if it’s not super useful, or if it’s just starting off, then I may not update the post with it, but feel free to share it anyway. Just make sure it’s free!

Finally, no links to language learning blogs on this page – separate post about that shortly!

Looking forward to reading your suggestions!

----------------------------
40+ FREE online language learning resources: Most comprehensive and up to date list of courses, communities, exchanges and more! 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!

The post 40+ FREE online language learning resources: Most comprehensive and up to date list of courses, communities, exchanges and more! appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

----------------------------
I’m severely deaf and partially sighted, but have learned 5 languages. Here’s my story 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!

The post I’m severely deaf and partially sighted, but have learned 5 languages. Here’s my story appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

It’s time to raise the dead!!

My secret mission that is taking up the vast majority of my time in Berlin continues (don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about it when the time is right! For now, it’s so secret that I can’t even give clues as to what it is or when I can tell you about it!), but it’s time for one final mini-mission!

Next weekend I’ll be flying back to Budapest to spend the weekend at the first ever Polyglot Conference, and will get the chance to meet a few well-known online polyglots in person for the first time (several of which did the Skype Me Maybe music video with me), as well as some other friends you’ll have seen make appearances on this blog including Christine, Susanna, Balint and Brian, and fun people I’ve been in touch with online for a while and am really looking forward to meeting!

We chose to do the conference in Budapest, as it’s where Kató Lomb, a wonderful female polyglot who wrote a great book on language learning, used to live. Having lived there for a couple of months, I think it’s a wonderful city!

While it’s only one weekend, and I’ll likely be speaking other languages most of the time (practising all my main languages with the other polyglots, as well as giving a presentation in English) I do want to make sure that I’m using as much Hungarian as I can otherwise!

But unlike with my recent Polish/Norwegian projects, I actually have already had a Hungarian mission!

Almost three years ago, I had the project to reach conversational level in Hungarian, and at the end of my time was able to record this spontaneous chat in the language. It went well, and it’s a project that I was quite happy with! However, the problem is that since I take on so many language projects, unfortunately I simply can’t maintain all of them and several end up getting forgotten.

Hungarian is among these – I really can’t say anything in Hungarian these days; it’s almost as good as if I had never learned it! Since I don’t exactly have a super memory, the only way I can keep a language alive is by being active in it, and I stopped maintaining Hungarian entirely.

Three years may seem like a short time, but I’ve had a pretty hectic and intense three years, and have been learning new languages which tend to replace the old ones in my head if I don’t maintain them.

Despite this, I know that it’s somewhere in my head! This mini-mission will be a new experience for me because I’ve never tried to reawaken an effectively “dead” (or forgotten) language from the past.

Since I’m still very busy, but wanted to do much more than my previous missions of just 2 or so hours, I’ve set aside ten hours before my flight to see how far I can get. It’s not ideal, and because of that, it’s unlikely I’ll reach the same level as what I had by the end of my mission, but I hope to try to get as close as I can to it, and hopefully be able to have conversations in the language (I think I’ve shown with the Polish mission that being an effective tourist in a few hours is more than possible even if you are starting from scratch, which I’m not this time).

Most of this time is devoted to spoken practice with a Hungarian teacher on italki.

I’m looking forward to heading back to Budapest and re-learning this “supposedly hardest language in the universe” (I’ll have to re-read my own encouraging blog post on the language as part of my studies )

I’ll share the results with you at the end of the project! If you have experience in reawakening dead languages in your head, share your tips with us in the comments!

There will probably be no video update with my concluding blog post, although I imagine there will be lots of videos recorded that weekend in other languages with the other polyglots

----------------------------
Mini mission: Reawakening a dead language! (Hungarian) 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!

The post Mini mission: Reawakening a dead language! (Hungarian) appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

I asked those following my Facebook, twitter and G+ pages what their favourite quotes or short inspirational ideas were, to inspire language learners and got some real gems! I also did my own research online and tried to include some quotes on this blog that people have really enjoyed.

And finally, I searched long and hard for the best Chinese proverbs relevant to language learning and went the extra mile to provide the original Chinese (simplified and traditional) along with the pinyin pronounciation, with tone marks.

If I missed any really good ones, make sure to let us know in the comments and I’ll keep this post updated! Definitely share your own quotes with us! They can be specifically about language learning, about learning in general, or any words that you feel can be applied to inspire language learners, from famous people, or that you have simply come across that have inspired you. I hope the comments will be as interesting as the post itself!

Don’t forget to share this post with your friends (using the floating share buttons on the left) to spread some inspirational language learning encouragement! When you do that, I recommend adding a note to your share with your favourite quote on this page! Enjoy!

Famous and historical figures on language learning

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” ‒ Nelson Mandela

“Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.” ‒ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language.” ‒ Ezra Pound,

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein

“We should learn languages because language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly.” – Kató Lomb

“To have another language is to possess a second soul”- Emperor Charlemagne

“When a person has an accent, it means he can speak one more language than you” – Fernando Lamas

“One language sets you in a corridor for life.  Two languages open every door along the way.” ‒ Frank Smith

Anonymous quotes on language learning

“You live a new life for every new language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only once.” – Czech proverb

“Grammar: The difference between knowing your shit and knowing you’re shit”

Man lernt Grammatik aus der Sprache, nicht Sprache aus der Grammatik. (You learn grammar from language, not language from grammar)

“Grammar is like a really powerful pharmaceutical: helpful in small doses, but fatal when overprescribed.”

Is fearr Gaeilge briste na Béarla cliste [Broken Irish is better than clever English]

Chinese proverbs (with original simplified/traditional Chinese and pinyin)

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step…. 千里之行﹐始于足下 [千裡之行﹐始於足下]  Qiānlǐ zhī xíng, shǐ yú zú xià

Failure is the mother of success  …. 失败是成功之母 [失敗是成功之母] ….. Shī bài shì chéng gōng zhī mǔ

Making a thousand decisions, even the wise will make a mistake…. 智者千虑必有一失 [智者千慮必有一失] Zhìzhě qiān lǜ, bì yǒu yī shī

“Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.” …. 不闻不若闻之，闻之不若见之，见之不若知之，知之不若行之；学至于行之而止矣 [不聞不若聞之，聞之不若見之，見之不若知之，知之不若行之；學至於行之而止矣] Bù wén bù ruò wén zhī, wén zhī bù ruò jiàn zhī, jiàn zhī bù ruò zhīzhī, zhīzhī bù ruò xíng zhī; xué zhìyú xíng zhī ér zhǐ yǐ.

One step at a time (Crawl before you walk)… 循序渐进 [循序漸進] Xún xù jiàn jìn

Reading ten thousand books is not as useful as travelling ten thousand miles. (A pound of practice is more worth than an ounce of theory.)…. 读万卷书不如行万里路 [讀萬卷書不如行萬里路] Dú wàn juǎn shū bùrú xíng wànlǐ lù.

Try to save the dead horse as if it is still alive. (Nothing is impossible)… 死马当活马医 [死馬當活馬醫] Sǐ mǎ dāng huó mǎ yī.

Teachers open the door. You enter by yourself. …. 师傅领进门，修行在个人 [師傅領進門，修行在個人] Shī fu lǐng jìn mén, xiū xíng zài gè rén.

When we get to the mountain, there’ll be a way through (Every problem has a solution)…. 车到山前必有路 [車到山前必有路] Chē dào shān qián bì yǒu lù

Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere…  学习是永远跟随主人的宝物 [學習是永遠跟隨主人的寶物] Xuéxí shì yǒngyuǎn gēnsuí zhǔrén de bǎowù]

Khatzumoto quotes

Khatzumoto, who writes at Alljapaneseallthetime comes up with some wonderful nuggets all the time on his twitter account:

Generally, when we say “talented” what we actually mean is “responds well to known/popular/existing teaching methods”.

“You don’t know a language, you live it. You don’t learn a language, you get used to it.”

“Toddlers aren’t better than you. They just have no escape routes”

“Don’t do your best. Do something. Make the best of it”

“Learning grammar in order to use a language is like learning organic chemistry in order to make a sandwich.”

General quotes to inspire language learners

“Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.”

“A year from now you will wish you had started today”. – Karen Lamb

“Do or do not, there is no try” – Yoda

“It is not important to be better than someone else, but to be better than yesterday.”

“You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over” – Richard Branson

I hated every minute of training, but I said, “Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.” – Muhammad Ali

“The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake. You can’t learn anything from being perfect.” – Adam Osborne

“Everybody’s a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it’ll spend its life believing that it’s stupid” ~Albert Einstein

“If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.” –Frank A. Clark

“Life begins where your comfort zone ends”

“Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.” – Thomas Watson, IBM

“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare” – Japanese proverb (行動のともなわないビジョンは、ただの白日夢。ビジョンのない行動は、ただの悪夢。 )

Fall down seven times, stand up eight – Japanese proverb (七転び八起き, “Nanakorobi yaoki”)

“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now” – Chinese proverb (Couldn’t find original on this – if you know it, let us know in comments!)

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” – Samuel Beckett

“If skill could be gained by watching, every dog would become a butcher.” – Turkish proverb

“Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.” – Roger Crawford

“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.” — James Joyce

People’s favourite quotes from this blog/twitter/Facebook

“The difference between a stumbling block and a stepping stone is how high you raise your foot.”

“I’m a proud imperfectionist. Perfection is impossible, so by default perfection is for losers.”

“Learning languages isn’t about being smart, it’s about being tenacious.” (inspired by this comment)

“Any idiot can learn a language… perhaps I have to be that idiot.”

“A language is a tool. A means to an end. It deserves as much “respect” as a toaster does. Bend it to your will and communicate!”

“Stop making excuses and get the hell on with it!”

“If you always keep your feet planted firmly on the ground, you’ll have serious trouble putting on your trousers. Aim high, dive in unprepared, don’t take it all so seriously, and you may actually get somewhere!”

----------------------------
Encouraging quotes, Chinese proverbs with original translations, and inspirational thoughts for language learners 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!

The post Encouraging quotes, Chinese proverbs with original translations, and inspirational thoughts for language learners appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

Note: Last week’s top reasons we don’t learn languages and their retorts now has 32 reasons (originally 22 when I published it) and is quickly becoming the most detailed post on the blog with links to the most relevant answers! Check out the latest additions for some more inspiration, and make sure to share it with your friends to show once and for all that there are no good excuses not to learn! If I missed anything, let me know in the comments on that page!

Also, I am still looking for your success stories for a very interesting project to inspire many language learners. If you are someone with a family, an older learner, a single parent, from a poor country, have a learning disability, or any major setback, but still managed to successfully learn a language (or know someone who has), please share that story with us all! You should also take the time to sit down and read the comments on that blog post, as so many of them are already very inspirational!

On to today’s nugget:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfWnITmT1Ws

I came across this strange video on a break (from my top secret project). It depicts an episode of Law & Order as if it had chickens/roosters instead of people (from an episode of the funny show “Robot chicken”). Because of that, the dialogue is nothing but gibberish clucks.

And yet, it is incredibly easy to follow what is likely being “said”, especially if you happen to know the format that Law & Order episodes tend to take. Which “clucks” did you understand?

You may wonder why I’m sharing this video on a language learning blog, but I feel it conveys a concept I’ve tried to discuss in the past before for my own attempts to understand languages I didn’t know to a fluent level yet.

For instance, after 2 hours of learning Polish, I had to pick the one or two words I did understand in a given phrase I heard, and realize the vast amount of context around those words could fill in the gaps, and I actually managed to understand the majority of what was being said to me pretty well.

This was not down to my language skills of magically learning more Polish than was possible in such a short time span, but relying on the very obvious context that would have universally helped me exactly the same in any other language, even if the vast majority of what I heard was as good as noise.

After 2 months of learning Egyptian Arabic, I had my first ever in-person conversation and it went to very complicated topics “well beyond” my capabilities. But what I did was to take what I did understand, and where the conversation was likely to be going, and extrapolate from the context what was said. Because of this, I followed the gist well enough to indeed be pretty confident of what he was talking about.

Seeing through the (as yet) gibberish thanks to context

When I start to learn a language, or am still in the beginning stages, most of what I hear is still gibberish. It’s as good as listening to those chickens in the video above clucking, but with an occasional word that I do understand being sandwiched in among the noise.

What matters though is that I have tonnes of context to help me! The facial expressions of the people I’m talking to, their clothes and body language, the pauses and volume and tone of what they are saying, what was just said before that I understood which provides more context to likely words now, who I am talking to and what we are likely to be talking about, our surroundings, and countless other queues that I have from decades of experience with “contextese”. It’s one of the many reasons why I think adults are better language learners than kids.

It’s why we can watch TV shows in a language way before we are “ready”, and why we can attempt to participate in real exchanges long before we are fluent. Sure, most of what we hear is “noise”, but it’s comprehensible noise, thanks to the context!

So, even if the vast majority of what you are hearing sounds incomprehensible, you can still understand more than you think! “Contextese” is universal for all languages, and can give you the head start to get into conversations and follow discussions before you are ready. Language learning isn’t just about learning vocabulary and grammar, but experiencing the language and communication with that culture, many aspects of which you already have a head start with.

Let me know your thoughts on this in the comments below! And keep sending your comments on the two posts linked above!

----------------------------
Contextese – the most useful language you are already fluent in 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!

The post Contextese – the most useful language you are already fluent in appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

In my own success story, I consider all the many friends that I have made around the world, thanks to learning new languages, to be the coolest part by far and the force that drives me to continue and try to share this wonderful experience with as many other learners as I can.

----------------------------
Share your success stories with us! Leave a comment to potentially inspire millions of language learners! 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!

The post Share your success stories with us! Leave a comment to potentially inspire millions of language learners! appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

Today’s post is my serious attempt to collect every possible reason why we don’t learn a language in list format, and to offer possible suggestions to overcome them, or to request your solutions to these problems! I will be updating this list to add new reasons based on your comments.

(Note that in the post after this, I am looking for the opposite to reasons why we can’t and I want to hear your success stories that could potentially inspire millions of people!)

I am genuinely going to try to get the number of reasons and their possible retorts up to the high double digits, because I want there to be no more excuses for us to remain monolingual throughout our lives. Because of this, I will start with what I feel are the main reasons I have heard, or that I believed at the age of 21, and offer a quick thought or link(s) to a possible solution to or reframing of the problem.

If any of these apply to you, please consider my reply to them seriously and follow the links in each point to blog posts where I dive into it in more detail.

As an engineer, I do feel many problems can be looked at analytically and a possible solution offered up when you think about it logically enough!

So without further ado, here are some reasons I have come across, and my suggestions for them. Please reply in the comments below with your own challenges, and other commenters can chime in with their own suggestions! I’m also interested to read other solutions to the reasons I’ve already presented here.

1. I’m too old to learn a language

This old wives’ tale may or may not have been inspired by research showing that Feral children can’t learn a language after a certain age, but when talking about second language learning some research has actually shown that adults are better language learners than children, and my experience has also been that we tend to make these kids-are-better judgements falsely.

I consider myself a vastly superior language learner now than I was at the age of 6, 10, 14 etc., and I’m getting better with age. A good learning strategy, positive attitude and passion can put you very far ahead of those younger than you.

Also, something someone said in one of the comments below: “Kids aren’t better language learners. Ever talk to a 6 year old? They speak fluently but still say things like “funner” and “me and her went…”, and they still have trouble pronouncing a lot of consonants like TH, R, and L. And it took them 6 YEARS to get to this point, and they’re surrounded by it everyday. ”

It wouldn’t take me 6 years to fix these mistakes (considering I’m an adult with decades of experience using some language already). So why should we keep claiming children are so much better language learners if the reason to bring the point up is to discourage adult learners? I say that we should encourage everyone. Encourage children to use their advantages, and I’ll try to encourage (with this blog) adults to use their many advantages.

2. I don’t have any time to learn a language

Another presumption is that you can only succeed in language learning if you do it full time. This is also false, and I have come across an incredible number of people who have succeeded in learning a language while working a full-time job, as well as having other responsibilities. In fact, it’s way less typical to find a successful language learner who was able to devote his entire day to learning the language.

While I can do that myself recently, the vast majority of my language learning experiences have been quite different, while I worked full-time or even much more than full time. For instance, I worked a 63-hour-per-week job immediately after arriving in Italy, and still managed to reach a good level of Italian.

The trick isn’t about having more time, but making more time. We are all very busy, but many of us still achieve great things because we organize the time we have control over much better, and remove things that suck time out of our day, like television. Being successful in language learning isn’t about having months or years of free time, but putting in the individual hours.

3. I can’t travel to the country

Many of us feel that it’s impossible to learn a language if you can’t live in the country.

While I think the question of whether or not you could move abroad is one worth considering by embracing minimalism so you don’t need to earn so much money to buy so much crap (everything I own in the world weighs 50lbs/23kg, and I don’t have a car, have a smoking or drinking habit, and got by very well on $1000/month or less for the vast majority of the last decade on the road in simple but adequate living conditions with priceless life experiences instead, covering everything including accommodation and flights through various travel hacks), let’s presume this isn’t an option for reasons other than financial ones.

Actually many people learn languages to very good levels without ever setting foot in the country. Most of the other polyglots that worked with me on the Skype Me Maybe music video travel way less than I do, or not at all, and have incredibly high levels of their languages. Another example is Khatzumoto who learned Japanese to a professional level before ever setting foot in Japan, and I recently learned the vast majority of my Egyptian Arabic in the middle of Brazil.

The thing I do feel is really essential to successfully learning a language is speaking it. Don’t just stand there, say something!

While it’s true that you have more opportunities to do that in the country, you can actually create many opportunities to speak your target language in your home town. Do this in person using social networking tools to set up meetings, or be adventurous and “level up” in your target language. You would be surprised how easy it is to find an unlikely language in the “wrong” country.

If you don’t live in a major city that is likely to have speakers of your target language, then create a virtual immersion environment and get on Skype and speak to them directly on sites like italki, Verbling, or by setting up a language exchange through forums or many other online sites. This way, you can practise speaking your target language for several hours a day, as good as if you were in the target country!

Keep in mind that way too many lazy expats default to just using English even when they live in the country, so moving abroad is no guarantee whatsoever to success in the language. It’s way too easy to fall into the English speaking bubble and learn nothing. Only true effort, whether from home or in the country itself, is what determines success!

4. I can’t afford it!

Thanks to the incredible prominence of expensive courses like Rosetta Stone in the states, I have found that Americans especially feel that it’s a question of throwing money at the problem.

In fact, you can learn a language very well without spending a cent! The worst possible advice you can get in language learning is to make it all about the most expensive materials. Cheap or free materials (either online or from your local library) actually tend to do a very good job, and in many cases a much better one than expensive courses offer.

I generally start with a phrasebook that costs about $8 first, and then make it about meeting people, or talking to them online which can be totally free on the sites I mentioned in the above links.

5. I’ve got no language gene!

Did you do poorly in languages in school? Well, me too. I could have easily thought that learning a language wasn’t my destiny, but that’s simply not the case.

This doesn’t mean anything except that you don’t do well in learning languages in an academic setting, or more likely, you were missing the most important ingredient at the time and wasn’t passionate about learning that language.

Language learning is not a gene that we have or don’t have. It’s almost always actually a case of self-fulling-prophic-itis that you have. Luckily, this is not genetic and can be treated with a few doses of common sense and putting in some hard work.

While it may seem that others learn their languages “effortlessly“, in fact if you look behind the curtain you can see that there is nothing impressive about many language learners other than dedication, and everything they do is something pretty much any other human can do!

6. I haven’t found the right language learning technique for me yet!

I have my way of learning a language, but this doesn’t mean that you should do exactly what I do. In fact, the last thing you should be wasting your time on is endlessly researching me and other language learners to see which one of us has that one perfect language learning approach.

This isn’t about searching for that perfect technique for you. Experiment and see what works and what doesn’t work! If you spend all your time trying to find just the right learning technique then years will pass you by where an “adequate” learning approach would have actually advanced you towards fluency already. Stop wasting time and get busy using your language, and adapt your learning approach to the challenges that you face!

7. I’m not ready to use it yet, and may not be for years

This is not a real reason, but a flawed mentality of perfectionism, which I find to be totally incompatible with non academic language learning.

Ditch perfectionism and make mistakes! The “ready point” is what us engineers refer to as an asymptote – something that is only achievable with infinite time.

Learn a few phrases and then use them. You are ready for that immediately.

8. I don’t want to

This may seem like a strange reason to include, but based on the 700 or so emails that I get every day, when people start coming up with really imaginative excuses that are not at all valid at all when you look at them carefully, you have to simply wonder if they don’t want to learn this language and are trying to justify getting out of the task? As if I was to say “Ah OK, then you are the one exception in the world, and can never ever learn this language!”

This has much more to do with the person simply not caring enough to put real work in.

For instance, while I was learning German in school, I could blame many things like an inefficient academic system (despite a good teacher), and many other things in this list, but I could have overcome all of those challenges if it weren’t for the simple fact that I had no passion to learn the language at that time.

What changed for me was seeing German not as a super hard language made up of nothing but complex grammar rules, but to see the German people as interesting and worth getting to know, with the language being simply a tool to go about doing this. This switch in learning languages for the people and culture, ignited a passion in me that killed all devotion to my previous excuses.

9. This language is too hard

It doesn’t matter what language you are learning, you will always find some people claiming that it is the one true hardest language in the world. I’ve heard it for every single language that I’ve taken on (except for Esperanto), and for many I haven’t. If you think about it for a second, clearly a hell of a lot of people are wrong here!

There are excellent reasons why Polish isn’t hard, Hungarian isn’t hard and Chinese isn’t hard. The thing is, if you are biased enough you can come up with a list of reasons why these or any other language is hard, but that’s only when you have an arse-backwards mentality about it, and could do with a little optimism.

The truth is that there is nothing particularly special about this particular language that you are taking on. It’s a language spoken by carbon based human lifeforms, like every other. Learning every language is hard work.

Where one language has hard grammar, it may have incredibly easy vocabulary or simple sounds. When one language has tones, it may have super simple grammar, very short and logical words, and the tones could be an aspect of making it much easier than other languages to distinguish words.

Nobody wins in this comparison game. If you aren’t learning them forget other languages and focus on the one you are truly passionate about!

10. I’m not even sure which language I want to learn, or I want to learn several and can’t!

When someone tries to spread themselves thin and dabble in several different languages at the same time, then I feel they are going about it the wrong way if they want to become a polyglot.

Rather than asking other people which languages you should learn, and putting a little bit of work into several, pick the one that attracts you the most and focus entirely on that until you can speak it well.

There will be plenty of time later to get to other languages, but until you succeed in learning one, it becomes a lot harder to gain the momentum and “polyglot edge” required to learn other ones.

11. My memory is terrible for learning new words

My memory is crap. I can’t remember someone’s name unless I hear it several times, I always forget where I put my damn keys, and I walk into rooms way too often to do something particular and then ask myself Why the hell did I go in here again?

Despite this, I can remember most new words quickly, not because I am naturally good at it, but because I trained myself to become naturally good at it. I use a combination of image association, and spaced repetition flashcarding, and this has greatly expanded my memory capacity! A site like memrise combines the two with pre-made mnemonic cues for many sets of vocabulary. Try some of these, and you will be surprised how great your memory capacity suddenly becomes for new vocabulary!

Also, before you even start you should know that you may already know thousands of words in the language!

12. I’m going to frustrate native speakers!

I have been to many countries over ten years of travelling the world, and spoken languages in the wrong country many times to maintain and practice them, and (with just one exception) I have never ever had the native speaker be frustrated with me speaking their language.

They are always overjoyed and if you have a fun personality and aren’t nervous about your hesitations, then they feel less uncomfortable with you in the early stages.

Frustrating others is always just in your own head, and you are misreading people if you think that most of them will laugh at you. Embarrassing mistakes happen, and you simply shake them off. Any frustration that could occur is more likely a result of your nervous body language, which has nothing to do with your language level.

I find an attitude of failing fast and failing often will help you get used to and get more comfortable with this learning stage, so that you can have more fun with it and others can enjoy you speaking their language more.

13. They only speak English with me when I try to use their language!

This may happen to the best of us – we confidently try to practice with a native speaker, either a foreigner in our country, or while we are in their country, and they immediately reply to our attempts to use their language in English.

There are actually very simple ways around this problem, first just tell them you want to practice and be convincing in other ways and you’ll be surprised how easy it is to stop all that English. And if that doesn’t work? Then be much more insisting and you can always be the more convincing person and make sure you get language practice. No worries!

14. The entire world speaks English, so why bother?

What is more likely than the above reason, is your own laziness and misconception about the prominence of English. I have found that even in Northern European countries, it’s incredibly easy to keep the conversation in the right language.

In fact, English is absolutely NOT as prominent as many would have you feel. The problem is that those who travel, and do so with more interest in snapping photos and eating in expensive restaurants, while staying in five star hotels will be very much convinced that the entire world speaks English. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Once you veer off the beaten (and incredibly expensive) path you’ll find that quite a lot of people pretty much have next to no English. I was surprised to see that even in Norway, a friend of mine couldn’t buy cold medicine because the pharmacy didn’t understand “cold” in the context of an illness. And once I got outside of Shanghai and Beijing, I absolutely needed my Mandarin to do anything in China, since I very rarely met people with any English.

If you plan to have anything beyond a superficial encounter with locals, or if you want to be able to talk to not just the university educated elite, then learning the local language is essential.

English’s world dominance is an illusion beyond specialized industries, and nothing more than a lazy excuse to not bother putting in some work to respect the locals and speak to them in their own language. There are many wonderful benefits of English-free travel!

15. I’m too shy to approach people for language practice!

I have found that this excuse stems from nothing more than a self fulfilling prophecy, that you tell yourself you are too shy and that creates a psychological feedback loop of you being too shy to approach people.

This is a delusion. I have found that the best way to “get over” this imaginary problem is to stop thinking about it so damn much!

16. I will never be able to learn that foreign pronunciation

While it may take a lot of work, I firmly believe that there is nothing physically stopping you from learning how to pronounce a new sound the right way.

For instance, it’s way easier than you think to learn how to roll your R. If you watch videos online for the particular sound you are looking to practice, or have a patient native sit down with you for a few minutes, you may be surprised at how manageable reducing your English accent really is!

The same goes for tones in Asian languages. It certainly takes a lot of practice, but you can learn to master them with time!

And just keep in mind that while you are improving your pronunciation, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having an accent!! Once you reach a certain stage in language learning, no matter how “bad an ear” you have, you will be understandable in your pronunciation, and it won’t hinder communication.

Some say it’s impossible to be confused for a native speaker if you start learning as an adult, but this has not been my experience. Although such tidying up should be left until later stages in language learning.

17. I’ve tried X and it didn’t work, so I’m a bad language learner!

You may find some convincing text that tells you that passive listening will magically solve all your problems, try it and and then fail miserably as well as wasting lots of time. You may have studied the language for many endless months or years, and still have nothing to show for it.

Does this mean that you are broken? NO! It means that this particular approach does not work for you (even if it has worked for others). As I keep saying, it’s not about finding that one true method, it’s about experimenting and discarding whatever does not work for you until you find what does!

18. I still can’t decide which course to invest in

I ran a survey and found that one reason people don’t learn languages is because they are too indecisive about what courses to go with. NONE of them are perfect.

Whenever people need to know the “best” resource/course to invest in, I now direct them to languageninja.com

In general, just find whatever course is in your library or bookshop that is affordable and use it. Don’t make it all about the course though – I only find that I get use out of such courses when I am learning with them between real spoken sessions or exposure to native content in some way, so that I have real context and something to passionately work towards.

19. I have a particular problem with a specific aspect of this language

Wondering whether to take on an Arabic dialect or MSA? Or how to learn a specific dialect like Colombian Spanish? Want to find the best online resources specifically for learning the Irish language? Frustrated about why the language has to have masculine and feminine (and neuter/common etc.)?

These kinds of questions don’t have a quick one-size-fits-all answer, but they do have an answer many times. Just ask. If a quick Google session doesn’t help you, sign up to a language forum and ask your question there! People will point you in the right direction and give you the encouragement you need!

Make sure to be public about your language learning project, and start a blog or language log or tell your friends about it, or update your Facebook status as you are learning it. You can get wonderful feedback and encouragement this way!

20. I did get somewhere, but am stuck at a plateau now

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The way I always get over plateaus is by re-evaluating my learning approach and to focus on solving my biggest problem, which is hard, but less overwhelming.

21. Fluency seems just so out of reach, and I’m so far away from it. Why even bother continuing?

The problem here is actually having ridiculously elitist standards on your fluency. Standards so high that you presumably have to speak your second language better than your first!!

Focus on getting up a tiny notch – keep your eye on the steps, not on how high the mountain is!

There is also nothing wrong with appreciating the early stages in language learning! Learning a few phrases can get you so much, and is an essential part of the project to eventually get fluent.

22. I’m just not confident enough to use my language

Confidence, like being shy that was mentioned above, is a state of mind. It’s not something you will find on page 67 of your grammar book, it’s a decision you make to decide to ignore all the negativity and empty reasons why you can’t, and to just stop thinking about it so much.

The way that I get confident with my languages is simple: I fake it until I make it. I “pretend” like I’m confident, do “what a confident person would do” and then next thing I know, I kind of do become way more confident. A state of mind is just that, and not a stamp for life, but something that you have much more control over than you think.

It turns out that our worst enemy on the path to success in language learning can be ourselves, when we keep sabotaging our progress. You can achieve the “impossible” when you look at it differently!

23. I get sidetracked too easily with vaguely similar tasks every time I try to work on my language skills!

I had made it to 22 reasons myself, but a few of you have already offered some good further excuses in the comments, so I’d like to go through as many as possible over the next points!

The first one is from Peter, who says “23: I spend too much time reading blogs about language learning (and no time is left to actually learn) ”

This may be somewhat in jest, but I do genuinely consider it a real problem (online and similar distractions in general, not language learning blogs . You can blame my one or two posts a week that take a few minutes to read as the root of all problems in the world if you like, but don’t expect me to take it seriously! ), and it’s one that I have faced too.

For instance, I may spend time on a language forum, Reddit’s languagelearning subreddit, look something up on Wikipedia and getting lost in random “interesting” links, seeing a new video by a language learners that I like and getting pulled in random directions on Youtube, discovering a new interesting language learning website and spend an hour or so playing around with creating a pretty new profile, discovering an interesting looking language learning book and get lost reading up on the author or online reviews of it, or trying to use social media tools to get a set up an in-person meet up and wasting too much time browsing profiles… and many other things.

While some people may like to presume that I am naturally more disciplined than they are, this is simply not the case. I have wasted endless hours doing pointless things many times when I should have been language learning. Discipline doesn’t fall from the sky or result from the right ACGT sequence in your genome (see 5, above); it’s something that can be learned.

One way that I have forced myself to work more efficiently is to hack my time better by using the pomodoro technique (one task and one task only for 25 minutes, and then a 5 minute break where I can clown around and waste time), and this small dedication means that for those 25 minute blocks I will stick to thing I’m supposed to do.

To make sure that you really get into this routine and don’t waste time, see point 15. in that link and learn how to block the leeches. I simply cannot enter all those sites I mentioned above (Reddit, Youtube, forums, social media sites) when I’m in work/study mode, because I’ve activated Leechblock.

If fluentin3months is that much of an interesting website that you spend many hours here, then turn on the block for your study time… and just make sure to be subscribed to my email list so you do get notifications of new posts every few weeks, rather than checking that regularly, as I don’t want to lose readers

24. No one around me (friends/family/significant other) supports or encourages my language learning endeavours

The next one that came up in the comments was this post. It’s certainly one that I can relate to!

When I decided to get serious with my Spanish, after almost six months of being devoted just to English, I had announced it to all my friends and thought that they’d instantly support me!

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. Some of my Spanish friends, it turns out, had been using me to get free English practice. Some of my English speaking friends were not interested in supporting me in this endeavour and would speak back to me in English and tell me to just take a break, since they don’t have any patience to help me.

While I was in France, for 9 months I found that my co-workers and those I would meet out and about in Paris would be very much impatient with my attempts to use French with them. It gave me a negative experience of Paris for many years until I went back to see why it happened.

There is no simple one-size-fits-all solution to this problem. But the first thing you should and be convicted about doing is sitting down with those (especially family members and friends you see often) and tell them passionately about why you are doing this, and that you genuinely need their support.

Like the initial steps to convince foreigners to speak to you in a given language, this reasoning with them emotionally can change everything. The problem may simply be that they don’t appreciate how seriously dedicated you are to learning the language, and could have thought it was just a silly hobby. In many cases showing them you are serious and appealing to their sense of empathy could convince them to ease off on you, and give you the support you need.

This worked with several of my friends in Spain, and I worked especially hard to make it work for those I would continue to see more often.

As mentioned in the same link, they may be “discouraging” you actually because they can see your frustration and may be trying to spare you from this. Far from them trying to sabotage your efforts, they see themselves as saving you from all this frustration.

When you lighten up a little, and have fun even with awkward moments, your outward behaviour shows that you are enjoying this and your close friends will want to make sure you continue to. If they are true friends and they love or care for you, try to realize that their motivation may genuinely be benevolent, just that you haven’t shown how happy language learning makes you, or how important it is to you.

If it’s people you see less regularly though, who don’t care much for your interests and are just being mean, you may have to seriously consider just stop seeing them again. This is what I had to do with the Spaniards only interested in advancing their English level for their résumés (when I needed to learn Spanish for more urgent reasons), and I simply stopped meeting them or talking to them and I made new friends.

There are always other people, both in person and in online communities, ready to give you the encouragement you need. We can’t convince everyone to go along with us on this, but stick to those who do encourage you and avoid those who don’t, it at all possible. If they are not supporting you in something so truly important to your life goals, then frankly they aren’t worthy of the title “friend”.

If you are with a significant other and want to learn a language, guest posters on this blog shared their thoughts about language learning when in a couple.

25. I have a learning or physical disability others don’t have

This is a rough one, because language learning is a mental effort, and our brains are our biggest tools in progressing and getting where we need to go. It can be frustrating when we think that we have unfairly been dealt a (real medically confirmed) disadvantage as language learners.

Due to an early illness when I was younger, I myself had to go to speech therapy throughout my childhood and for many years had trouble speaking English. I couldn’t pronounce simple letters, and had to think really hard as I was speaking to form my thoughts.

Some of this still lingers on and I have always had a little bit of an unnatural English – it’s one reason why people comment frequently that I don’t have a very strong accent, either from my part of Ireland or a way more comprehensible Irish accent for foreigners.

I decided to take this setback and reframe it as an advantage. Because I was more used to anyone else in making mistakes and sounding weird when I spoke (because I knew what it was like for most of my childhood), this meant that I was already used to making mistakes when I got into my second language (well, at least when I started taking it seriously with Spanish when I was 21), and this aspect is essential to making progress. The more mistakes you make, the more you are using the language and can get somewhere with it. Being comfortable and used to making mistakes puts you ahead of the curve!

Speaking a language badly is an absolutely essential part of language learning, so it’s OK that you do that too!

While your challenge may not be the same as mine, keep in mind that all learners have their own setbacks, whether one of the points I listed above, financial, stress, physical or mental setback. None of this is a stamp for life saying that you “can’t” do anything.

When this point comes up, I am always reminded of the story of Hellen Keller. She achieved the impossible in her life, despite being blind and deaf, and among her many achievements, she was able to read in five languages (in Braille). If she can learn other languages, with the most incredible biological setbacks that none of us could possibly imagine, then there are no limits to human achievements.

Others are proving that this is true, and Julie who wrote the comment inspiring this point is deaf and partially sighted and enthusiastically working and achieving great things in language learning herself! 

26. I’m not sure how or where to start – if I start wrong, I’ll sabotage the entire project!

There is some greatly exaggerated discouragement about “fossilization”, where people claim that mistakes you make at the start will stick with you forever, and thus you need to start perfectly or your language will be messed up for all eternity.

This is absolute and utter hogwash invented by crackpots who need to get a life. You can quote me on that.

There’s nothing wrong with having a rough or bumpy start in language learning. I’ve rebooted my attempts to learn both Spanish and German after initial failed attempts (six months living in Spain getting nowhere, and five years learning German in school, also getting nowhere), and I still ended up sitting a C2 mastery level exam in both of them.

The only tiny thing worth discussing in fossilization arguments is that you will have an accent in later stages, but that’s not a big deal, and I’ve found that you can successfully reduce your accent even when you come back to it in later stages. The reason most people have an accent permanently is because they simply don’t work on it or care about reducing it.

With this in mind start right now, even if you don’t have “the perfect strategy”. You can reboot your attempts and not suffer any consequences except a little time spent to learn and confirm what doesn’t work for you, which is OK!

My personal suggestion for where to start is to buy a cheap phrasebook for that language (Lonely Planet etc.), which aren’t perfect but are quite fine to begin with, learn some phrases, and then hop on italki with a real human being, or meet up with them in person, and use what you learned, see what you definitely need to learn for the next session and learn that.

Take it “slow”, but realize that you can still learn quickly, and it’s OK to be in a “hurry“, but the only way to get there is to test what doesn’t work. Start now with an imperfect strategy (like what I just suggested; maybe it will work for you, and maybe it won’t – no worries!) and improve on it as you learn. Don’t research the best way to start for endless months or years, just bloody start!!

27. I’m too negative / lazy

This point is not a real reason, but a self fulfilling prophecy. You tell yourself that you are too X, and you become it and use that as justification for why you can’t do anything, and by not doing anything you have proof that you are too negative/lazy. It’s an insane vicious circle.

Get out of it! Work on creating a “reality distortion field” (à la Steve Jobs; note that I’m not a fan of the unscientific “Law of attraction” concept at all) to make sure you have the positive mentality to see your language as half full.

Watch some inspirational videos, or read something inspirational to get back on track and remind yourself what all this is about, shake off your laziness or negativity because (unless you are have a real medical problem) it is all in your head.

28. I won’t understand people when they speak back to me!

This seems like a logical complaint for a language learner – we imagine that until we reach upper intermediate stage, nothing more than “yes, that’s $5 please” and other such simple phrases will be within our grasp.

This is not the truth however. You can do a lot, even with a little of your language.

To see me discuss this in more detail, check out this post where I explain how I extrapolated enough of a complex conversation to be able to chat in Arabic at my 2 month point.

It wasn’t a case of me not knowing enough (that will always be true; even advanced learners have some obscure vocabulary that will catch them out on occasion), but of me being open to being more flexible on guessing what is most likely being said. Practice, and getting used to attempting to use clever extrapolation is something we can all learn, and can understand more than we think we do, much earlier in the language learning process.

29. What I am doing in the language is too boring, and I lose interest quickly

See point 20!! If what you are doing is boring then stop doing what you’re doing. This doesn’t mean that learning the language is boring, just that the way you are trying it right now is.

Try to expose yourself to some alternative content in the language, find a different exchange partner, or follow any suggestions I’ve given above or from other language learners. There are almost infinite possibilities to how we could be busying ourselves with our target language, so staying bored in it is ridiculous when there are so many different things you could be doing while learning or practising that language!

30. With technological advances, within a few years learning a language will be obsolete and automatic

Here’s a silly one that people have brought up, even suggesting that they can shove their smartphone in people’s faces now, and all communication problems will be solved.

While technology does advance at an incredible rate (which I understand very well due to my background in electronic engineering), I can definitely say that learning a new language will never ever be replaceable by technology. Even if (in say 50 or 100 years time) the technology is there to give accurate subtitles on your i-Contactlense as people speak, there will always be something special missing about using the language yourself to interact with a human being.

You can’t live through translations. You have to deal with the language directly. That’s not to say that within the next few years there could be good apps or devices that can emulate basic touristy interactions pretty well (right now they really really can’t even do that satisfactorily in a real situation such as a noisy street when someone speaks normally; only in “ideal” conditions you will never meet in travels), but there is a brick wall they will hit very soon when you start to realize how much of our communication is not just words that have simple translations.

The universal translator cop-out is a lazy excuse to avoid work, used by zealous monolinguals who don’t understand how languages work. I wrote about why current universal translators are way off (way as in many decades or centuries, not as in 5 years) here: Why your smartphone will never be a universal translator. And yes, this is coming from a true Trekkie.

Rather than wait until when vacationing on Mars is the norm for technology to be an “OK” replacement for some interactions, just learn the bloody language now!

31. When I compare myself to other learners, I feel too inadequate

There is a major problem in comparing ourselves to others – the others we think have it so easy only let us see of them what they decide and what they reveal of their story.

It’s human nature to want to show our best features, and proudly share our achievements, and hide away when we have failures. For the individual, when applied right this can lead to a positive mentality geared towards success, refusing to give up, and moving forward constantly after minor bumps in the road.

But when they share their story and no attention is given to the bumps, it can seem like they had it easy, are way smarter than us, and that we are simply puny in comparison to such immense giants.

If someone ever thinks this of me, I like to point them towards my language learning failure résumé. This kind of thing is typical of successful people. I don’t write about such failures often because dwelling on them is boring, but they happen to me and other successful language learners as much as they do to anyone else.

In fact, when I’ve had the chance to sit down and talk with some very successful language learners as human beings, rather than as the image others may have of them, I see that they too feel inadequate at times, jealous of other learners, dumb that their level isn’t as high as it could be, and stuck on some challenge. It’s just not as “interesting” a part of their story that you would be aware of, and they have a great attitude and end up overcoming such things so you rarely hear them dwelling on it.

THAT positive attitude is what you need to emulate of them, not their seemingly perfect genius, luck and blessings from angels.

In my experience, for all aspects of life we simply can’t compare ourselves to others and think they have it easier without knowing all the facts.

Stop comparing yourself to language “gurus”. They face many challenges too, but keep a brave face to battle through them quicker. If you got to sit down and speak with them, you would see that they are human too, and mess up, and are perhaps jealous of some advantage you have that you happen to take for granted. The perfect learner you are jealous of does not exist.

Join the person you look up to in working hard, facing challenges and then having successes. This is something we all go through!

32.I’ve been exposed to the language since I was a child and STILL don’t speak it!

I have come across a few stories of people whose parent(s) speak a language that they were exposed to for the first few years of their life, but then were too exposed to another and never got into it.

Unlike the other reasons above, this has the extra frustration that they did indeed get exposure when they were young, but since they didn’t pick it up it is their fault for being so bad at languages. In fact, this is a problem many can relate to, and it’s just a case of re-booting your efforts and starting fresh with that language until you succeed. A commenter in the success stories post shared her experience in doing exactly that! Well worth the read if you need inspiration!

33. You tell me! I’ll be updating this list based on your comments

——

As I said, I am going to keep this blog post up to date with more reasons as they come to me. My initial list of 22 is now 29 and counting!

We call these “reasons” to ourselves, but they really are excuses.

I hope that by presenting possible ways around these issues, via the many links in this post for each point, that you will no longer turn to that excuse as holding you back.

If you have no excuses left, and stop thinking about why you can’t, then you can focus on how you can, and will make the progress you need to learn your language successfully!

Let me know your other reasons for not learning a language in the comments below, or your alternative solutions to these reasons I’ve presented, or give people a hand if they have their own reason that you may know a good solution to. Also, for a change in theme to reasons why we don’t succeed, please see the post after this one looking for your success stories to potentially inspire millions of language learners!

And don’t forget to share this post with your friends on Facebook if you think they may be relying too much on one or two (or several) of these reasons themselves!

Thanks and happy language learning!

----------------------------
The many reasons (32 so far) why we DON’T succeed in learning languages, and retorts for why we can. Let’s hear your reasons/solutions in the comments! 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!

The post The many reasons (32 so far) why we DON’T succeed in learning languages, and retorts for why we can. Let’s hear your reasons/solutions in the comments! appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan

As I wrote earlier in the week, my latest language learning attempt was definitely not a success.

While some people may take this as a “sign” that their luck isn’t with them, and their genes are against them, so they should give up immediately, I have found that successful people tend to simply keep on trying, despite the fact that they too face frustrating failures.

In fact, the most successful people have more failures than the average Joe because they have more experiences. The trick is that they pick themselves up, and shake it off quickly, whereas others will dwell on the mistake too long, or as the last thing they do in the project.

The ratio of successes to failures may actually be the same as someone taking on the challenge for just a few days, but the difference is whether you decide to stop at a failure, or keep going until you get as many failures as possible out of your system until the only possible outcome is that you succeed.

However, the thing is that they prefer to share and proclaim the successes. It’s human nature. This can give a false impression to those who are also facing many challenges, who feel like others casually stroll through the challenge, with blessings from the (gene/astrology/luck) gods without any setbacks.

On a blog like this for instance, I prefer to keep an optimistic attitude, or if I have less than ideal conditions then I like to see what I can learn from it. I just don’t see the point in being a big cry baby and whining about how unfair my life is because I have to work for things that aren’t handed to me on a silver platter, as if I was the only one who had to earn things worth striving towards in life. I prefer to stay positive and encouraging, since there is enough negativity and discouragement in the language learning world already.

But I realize that this can make it feel like it’s easier than it is, so today I want to share my failure CV/resume with you all! This is just a very very small sample of my many failures, and the sheer number is why I have actually indeed succeeded in so many projects. It’s all about perspective.

I like the quote from Thomas Edison when he was interviewed about his “failure” to create a working light bulb, at a time when he still had yet to find a solution: “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”

Countless failed attempts to learn Spanish

My story in learning Spanish is such a huge failed attempt of not using it with many Spaniards in Ireland as a teenager, applying to an evening Spanish course in University several times in a row and not getting accepted for a ridiculous reason, being the dumbest guy in the expensive class I signed up to when I finally did join one, trying to read El señor de los anillos as a way to force myself to read consistently and giving up, thinking that studying the dictionary from A-Z would be a good idea, wasting way too much money on book courses, software, and any quirky tool I could find, and after six entire months living in Spain still not able to string together a simple sentence.

You can read the full version of this story here, where I was determined to fight this apparent “destiny” of mine to never be good at Spanish. It’s even worse than the brief summary paragraph above implies – the universe was pretty clearly telling me that I was a failure at learning Spanish.

But I didn’t give up.

And that’s why after all the hard work, I’ve been awarded a C2 diploma by the Instituto Cervantes, why I’ve been interviewed on live radio in Spanish, learned how to dance salsa and tango through Spanish, and most importantly, used my Spanish in my travels to make new friends. I’ve had a lot of successes in Spanish and this is only because I’ve also had so many failures first.

Ready to give up on French

When I did successfully learn Spanish to a good level, I had more confidence to learn other languages, but success was far from guaranteed!

I managed to spend an entire nine months in Paris, barely progressing beyond being a functional tourist. It was a lonely experience, with it very hard for me to make friends and Parisians grimacing whenever I spoke.

One reason it was a lonely experience was that I was determined to learn French, and so had to stick to a decision to stop using so much damn English, which had given me so much success in Spanish. This unfortunately meant avoiding the international community, which would have led to way too much English being used.

Every evening back home, I tried to study, but it was really hard with the demotivating experience every time I stepped outside. I wouldn’t find out until many years later the mistakes I was making in not opening my mind enough to integrate better into Paris.

While I was determined, I considered extending my time in Paris but was given a metaphorical slap in the face when offered a pathetic job contract despite lots of hard work. My work and social life were at the lowest point they had ever been and this was just feeding my low spirits and lack of progress in the language.

Despite this horrible experience, I kept working hard those nine months to reach something that I could use and rather than go home with my tail between my legs, I decided to start anew, move down south to Toulouse, and reboot my attempts to learn French to ultimately sit and pass the B2 (Upper intermediate) diploma given by the Alliance Française. Then I later moved to Quebec to really bring my level up several notches, and eventually became a professional freelance translator from French to English. Here is a video of me discussing translation in French.

I basically failed my way to success once again.

Irish

The Irish language was taught to me from when I was six years old. I had spent ten entire years of getting more or less a lesson a day, 5 days a week, throughout the school year.

Despite this, my level was so bad that I had to drop down to sit the “Ordinary level” university entrance examination. This has such ridiculously easy questions that all you need to do is look for a keyword in a question, find that word in the text you are being tested on, and copy the entire sentence as your answer. This actually requires next to zero knowledge of the language in question and this technique is pretty much the only reason I passed the exam.

Ten years. It’s an immense time to go through language classes and have nothing to show for it. During my year in France, someone asked me to translate some basic phrases to Irish (such as “I love you”, and even “Hello”) and I couldn’t even do this.

I resolved to change this and moved to the Gaeltacht, felt even more embarassed when Russians, Chinese and other Europeans were speaking Irish better than me, but kept at it by using the language to make new friends and studying in a more effective way that was relevant to how I really needed to use the language. After a few more visits, and lots more struggling, I had a good enough level of Irish to be interviewed on the radio in the language! This would have been impossible if I hadn’t charged through all my previous failures to get over it and progress.

Chinese

Even one of my most recent language projects, just one year ago, after almost a decade of language learning experience posed me some unexpected challenges that slowed my progress down.

Rather than blame the language itself, which is surprisingly way easier than those obsessed with promoting scare tactics would have you believe, the issue was mostly due to something similar to the problem I had in Paris and a poor attempt to integrate into the local culture, making it hard to make any local friends, leading to stress and frustration.

When I got online, hoping for some support or a break, I actually had legions of Internet trolls sending me hate (note that native speakers are never this nasty; only a few select few but voicy language learners with narrow minds and sad lives), which just made me even more distracted and frustrated.

I had some days when I felt like my brain was melting, and others when I spent most of the day in frustration. But I staid on track, and this is why I reached a B1 (lower intermediate) level, and was able to converse in Mandarin after those intensive months. I’m still working on improving my level now these days.

—————–

In fact, every language learning challenge I have ever taken on has had failures, moments when I felt like giving up, times when I saw others doing much better than me that got me down, many many hours of frustration, many conversations that went nowhere, rough starts, plateaus, forgotten words that I should know, and countless other experiences that made me feel like a failure. But I kept going anyway and that’s why I was ultimately successful.

Success isn’t a road paved with gold, sunshine, rainbows and smiles the whole way. You will face challenges that will push you and make you feel like giving up. The trick is to fail fast and fail often. I aim to make as many mistakes as possible and experiment as much as I can to try many approaches, adapt to the problems that may arise, embrace imperfection and make sure that overall I’m going in the right direction, even if I continue to run into brick walls that I have to find ways around.

When you see someone else apparently sail through the process easily, then you are seeing a filtered view of their story with the failures removed. They are always there.

I have many other big projects ahead of me, and expect many more failures, the vast majority of which will actually be simply lower grades of successes when you look at them right, or simply lessons that I had to learn to be able to find an approach that does work. Of course, it’s not about just failing, but learning from your failures. It’s said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I also think expecting to do something once and thinking it will turn out perfectly, and if it doesn’t then deciding that it’s absolutely impossible, is equally insane.

Fail fast and fail often, and you’ll exhaust all outcomes until you eventually find success.

Share your thoughts on this in the comments below, and feel free to share this post with your friends on Facebook! Here’s a link to the photo of me with my sticky for the language exchange meeting, which you can easily “share” directly on Facebook if you like it!

----------------------------
Fail fast and fail often: why many failures can be the key to success 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!

The post Fail fast and fail often: why many failures can be the key to success appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

Over the years, I’ve had a lot of missions, goals, projects or whatever you want to call them (16 of which I’ve blogged about, so far) to learn languages and take on many interesting other objectives.

Generally on this blog I try to see the good in what I can, and I consider each project I’ve blogged about up to now to be a success (some a huge success, and others short of my initial aim, but a very useful level I’m very proud of nonetheless, such as reaching a B1 rather than my planned B2 level in Arabic in a few months), and consider a black and white pass or fail attitude to be one worth discarding as totally irrelevant to such a non-academic topic of the degree to which you can express yourself in a foreign language, which is better thought of as beginner, through intermediate, through fluent on to mastery, rather than “can or can’t”.

When you put serious time into language learning, you can’t fail. It is all about those degrees of success, where you simply aim to get to as high a degree as possible.

Having said that, this time I can’t really put such a spin on it. It can’t be sugar-coated, I have simply not succeeded in my project to get by in Norwegian. When you take on a challenge over the very long term, or over a few months, you can do many things, and the good days and bad days can even out over time, but obviously this new theme of seeing how far I can get in just a few hours is something that leaves you way more open to errors, and chance.

Polish vs Norwegian intensive missions: comparison

For instance, I actually consider the most recent project of getting by in Polish over a few hours to be one of my most successful projects ever, because after just two hours I was able to have a basic conversation and even act as the designated Polish speaker for my group in dealing with taxi-men, ordering food, and asking for directions. There were, however, many things in my favour for that project;

The first person I spoke Polish with over Skype (Ewelina) understood my desire to not use any English, and was patient enough to stick to just Polish for our entire half an hour, which was an incredible boost to start the super intense project on.

When I got to Warsaw, I didn’t meet anyone I already knew well until my last day, so I was under more pressure to meet new people, walk around by myself, and use what I knew. As a solo traveller, I find this forces me to use my language much better.

As well as this, after I gave my TEDx talk (which was my priority), I was able to shift my focus to exploring Warsaw a little and using what I knew, which motivated me to do a little bit more studying.

Finally, Polish people have been preaching about how difficult their language is to me for years (being more voicy than others about the point), so I also had this extra motivation and passion to make this project a success, as I find such discouraging claims to be unhelpful and worth disproving. It’s a weird motivation, but I genuinely wanted to speak Polish, partly because of this!

In Norwegian on the other hand, the first person I talked to on Skype wasn’t as experienced a teacher and left more responsibility to me to come up with all ideas of how the lesson should progress, and it ended up more like “how do I say xxx?” questions in English the entire time rather than trying to really use the language (as you can see me struggle to attempt to do in my first Polish video). I can get good practice with pretty much anyone in later stages, but who I talk to in earlier stages is really important.

Also, the point of going to Oslo was actually primarily to spend time with some very good English speaking friends of mine (see below), which took away the solo-pressure I usually have, to try and integrate more.

Finally, plans to meet particular Norwegians I was in touch with, for practise and to record a video for me to at least work towards, (recording videos have been great motivation for me to really buckle down!) didn’t work out, because two separate people I was in touch with, who were willing to appear on camera, ended up being too busy to meet me.

In the end, I only did a half an hour or so of studying my phrasebook, constantly procrastinated doing the rest, and ultimately would just say “Please” and “Thanks”, otherwise using English, rather than really using it. I fell down the trap of so many before me and became a typical English speaking tourist!

The real missing ingredient

Missed connections, a less than ideal first conversation, English speaking friends of mine everywhere and so on are all well and good for me to assign the “blame” for why I didn’t do with Norwegian what I was able to do in Polish, but these are all pretty weak excuses that could really have been overcome.

Several of my first Skype attempts in Arabic were also big wastes of time with bad teachers, but I kept trying and tested out other teachers until I found two or three that I did find I’d make genuine progress with. A less than ideal first experience is no excuse for not trying again until you get a better one.

I also had English speaking friends everywhere around me while I was in Valencia, but still managed to make the smart decision to make sure I got into Spanish.

And my first day in Oslo, I had a Fluent in 3 months reader meet up (as always when I travel, announcing it in a location-specific targeted update on my Facebook page), and one of those present wasn’t a native speaker but spoke C level Norwegian, and offered to meet up and help me practise. I could have made the time to do that, and even record the video together (not with a native speaker as I prefer to do, but 2 non-natives chatting in Norwegian could have actually been a more interesting video on Youtube!)

Each of my excuses has a good retort, the same way being too old, not having time, not being able to travel, not having the right language genes, and every other excuse does have an answer, if you are willing to accept that maybe you are the problem.

The real missing ingredient was lack of commitment, laziness and lack of passion. Passion is the one true thing that separates those who are successful from those who aren’t, and I simply didn’t have the kind of passion to learn Norwegian as I’ve had for other languages.

Fail fast and fail often – it’s all a learning experiment!

OK, I lied at the start when I said that I can’t put a positive spin on this mini-mission

I see everything I do as a continuous experiment, and all a chance to learn and improve for future projects. Even with the pressure of starting a blog for accountability, and a decade of language learning experience under my belt, I’m as prone to messing up as everyone else. I firmly believe that perfection is impossible, and being open to experimenting and making mistakes is the true road to success.

These two mini-projects have been an interesting experiment, and I have seen that you can indeed do something incredibly useful the day before travelling to the country, but giving yourself that short a time span leaves too much open to the Murphy gods, so while I will have a project to link to for some encouragement to get someone off their ass if they are flying to a country tomorrow, I think I’ll stick with setting aside at least several days rather than just a few hours in future!

And of course, after I finish this intensive super-duper secret contract in Berlin, I can get back to much larger commitments than that, which are way more practical in producing real results.

Getting by in 2-5 hours is definitely possible, but perhaps not advisable as the only thing you’ll try, and do so half-assed

I’ll have more on this concept of learning, even through “failed” experiments, in the next post!

Still had a fun time in Norway!

Having said all that, while the language aspect of this project was a disappointment, I actually had a wonderful time in Norway!

I joined Chris Guillebeau and a few others for a “nutshell” tour of Norway’s Fjords, seeing some beautiful scenery on the west coast of the country over two days. We then get back to Oslo for Chris’ “End of the world” party, since he had successfully visited every single country in the world!

I was joined by loads of great friends of mine here and hung out with them for the rest of my time until leaving the country. Now that I think of it, Norway is actually the first time in my entire life that I have travelled to a country for a genuine holiday. I always tend to have a cultural objective, mixed in with language learning involved, or if it’s a brief visit then I am going for a particular conference I have to speak at. This time was just to see friends and be a visual rather than a cultural tourist.

It was a fun experience! But sadly, for the first time, I have nothing to say about the local culture or about any new friends from the country that I’ve made. By speaking just in English (and German/Spanish etc. with some other foreigners in the party), I feel like I have seen Norway itself through a window, without breaking through it.

The Norwegians of course speak excellent English, but Northern Europeans can of course be spoken to in their own language. Then again, I was only really speaking to those in the tourist industry or in central Oslo.

As it happens one of our group needed to get some cold medicine in Bergen (Norway’s second city), and the lady at the pharmacy couldn’t understand what she meant by “to have a cold”, and I noticed quite a lot of really strange translations in the English on signs and menus, some almost meriting a submission to Engrish.com. So I definitely think that spending more than a couple of days in the country would merit putting serious work into learning the language.

Norwegian, like all languages, would definitely be worth learning for someone visiting the country. I didn’t do so well this time, but I’ve learned a lot, so I can certainly do better the next time I visit a country briefly

Let me know your thoughts on this mini-mission in the comments below!

----------------------------
Oops! Logically analysing when something goes wrong, rather than resorting to excuses 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!

The post Oops! Logically analysing when something goes wrong, rather than resorting to excuses appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.