Warning: This video contains a silly looking Irish guy singing a German song in bad karaoke-style. Protect your ears!

Singing is an amazing way to dramatically improve your language learning strategy. To prove to you that I’m serious about this, here is a video of me singing in German.

It’s a pop song called “Pflaster” from ich und ich that I like. (Here’s a vague translation of the lyrics). I’m not a good singer, but that doesn’t stop be from trying… Hopefully the Berlin scenery behind me distracts you from how bad my singing voice is!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPUEj4YOhms

Reasons to sing

Music and singing have made a huge difference in my language learning progress over the last seven years, as well as in getting along with the natives of the language. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Music connects across cultures and can break down barriers. When I have sung people songs they wouldn’t expect me to know and that they like, it has instantly broken the ice. In my first weeks in Berlin, even the start of the Sesame Street song in German helped me to make new friends! If I ever meet Madrileños I usually give them the theme song of Aquí no hay quien viva in an Irish twang. It always impresses them way more than perfect grammar ever will!
2. Getting to know the music is getting to know the culture and language and sometimes learning languages is like learning a musical instrument.
3. Learning the lyrics of a song helps you expand your vocabulary and teach you some slang/typical phrases.
4. Singing can actually help you reduce your foreign-sounding accent! One of the ways I managed to convince Brazilians that I was a Carioca back in December was due to taking intensive singing lessons instead of Portuguese lessons. My music teacher taught me more about sentence rhythm, pronunciation, tones and beat of Portuguese than a foreign language teacher ever would have been able to.
5. As described in the free chapter of the Language Hacking Guide (subscribe to the Language Hacking League on the right of the site to receive a copy), you can use music and singing to help you learn to speak simple basic essential phrases to get by in a language much quicker.
6. You can take music with you anywhere and learn and practise it on the move thanks to your MP3 player / mobile phone. While it’s pleasant to have music in the background, make sure to actually pay attention to the words if you want to learn something beyond just being able to hum the tune!
7. It’s fun! You can put your whole body into singing if you like and let your hair down a lot easier than you would in many speaking situations. You can really enjoy yourself by singing and it helps to improve your mood. Life would be way cooler if people sang more! Did you ever notice how happy everyone is in musicals?

So don’t be shy, and don’t worry if you don’t have a good singing voice (I don’t think Sony Records are going to be rushing to sign a contract with me based on the video above, but that isn’t the point is it?) and enjoy yourself!

If music has helped you to improve your language skills, share your story with us and let us know of even more reasons why people should sing to improve their language skills!

If you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to share it on Facebook!

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A whole industry of language learning products is based on something that I have to frankly say that I think is absolute rubbish.

Some people swear by it, and yet it rarely ever produces any useful results.

The shocking truth is that passive listening is never going to get you to fluency in a language. What’s even worse is that it won’t even help your ability to understand.

Learn a language while you sleep? Dramatically improve your ability to converse by having the radio/TV on in the background for thousands of hours? Master a language while you work or do your taxes with your shiny iPod blaring noise you aren’t paying attention to?

Not a hope in hell.

This is something that really touches a nerve for me because I have met the results of this approach – people who have put thousands of hours into passive learning and they are barely any better off because of it.

It’s barely better-than-nothing.

I meet dozens of disappointed language learners every week, no matter where I am in the world, and I have declared war on the reasons holding them back from reaching fluency in their target language, and relying on passive learning (playing audio in the background while you are focused on something else) is high up on my list.

I want to destroy this myth and finally help these frustrated people do something useful. In the same way as just studying will never help you speak, passive listening will never help you speak and even understand a language.

Results of thousands of wasted hours?

I asked some people on twitter and on Facebook what their opinion of the actual results of this was and (among others) I got the following replies:

• @hpp23 I tried passive listening but it didn’t help me in my learning. First understand actively, then listen passively & let it sink
• @yearlyglot I think passive listening can only be done when you already know the language. But learning must be active.
• @permanentnomad After two years of studying Japanese with it, I think my time would have been better spent speaking with natives.

I share these sentiments. When you already understand the language, it’s different – but to learn the language? The problem with embracing a passive means of learning a language is that a language is active. It requires your attention to understand and your ability to produce to actually converse.

Sorry to break it to you but you have to do some work to make progress in a language. Passive listening is a way to escape doing something useful, since you are doing something else at the same time.

Having thousands of hours of audio in the background will do you no good if you aren’t actively giving it your attention. It’s just noise unless you are actively listening to it.

My own disappointment with passive listening

This approach was already something I was sceptical about for several years, but as part of the last months’ input experiment (some of which has helped me improve my learning approach) I had the radio on in German all the time while I was doing something else (writing a book, or doing grammar or written exercises for the test) and gave it a real chance to see if it could help.

After sitting my German C2 exam, a few hours of spoken practise per week gave me 75% in the oral exam, and actively writing several texts for correction gave me 74% in the written exam, both of which I’m very pleased about. But passively hearing over a thousand hours of German radio got me a disappointing 37% in the listening exam.

The listening exam was hard, but it was very fair. The reason I got such a low result isn’t the test’s fault. It was my delusional belief that passive listening for a really long time gave me even the slightest edge. You definitely can’t listen your way to fluency, but you can’t even passively hear your way to a decent level of listening comprehension.

Some people have ludicrously suggested that I should have heard more to get a higher result. As if three thousand hours would have tripled my score(!)

The only reason I got even what I did would have been due to the spoken practise - which naturally involves focused listening. What I should have done for exam preparation is focus on any audio and analysed it while doing nothing else at the same time. I am confident that just five hours of this would have likely given me enough of an edge to pass the entire exam.

I realised this after doing an example exam a few days before the real one. If I had not done the active listening work the days before the exam, my result would have actually been even lower!

Why is it so popular?

It’s not even really passive listening I’m criticising here – that doesn’t actually exist; it’s passive hearing. When you are truly listening to something then it has your full attention.

So why is passive hearing so popular?

In this day and age we want short-cuts to everything. Drive-through fast-food, shampoo and conditioner in-one, phones that are also calculators/maps/Internet browsers/games. Sometimes this can be useful, but other times you are better just keeping it simple and doing one thing at a time. Learning languages is one of those things.

Learning a language while you do something else is lazy. It doesn’t show any devotion at all to the task at hand. It gives you a “sense” of doing something useful, and it can even be fun for some people! (Playing computer games and watching TV can also be fun, but it doesn’t mean you get anything useful out of it)

After the “honeymoon”, when you have to use the language you’ll just feel stupid that you can’t speak or understand when spoken to despite all that “work” you put in.

It answers people’s eternal question of “I don’t have time” to study/practise a language because “I’m too busy”, so just simply have it in the background to feel like you are doing work. Of course you have time! Stop making excuses and find the time! Even 10 minutes of focused learning/listening will give you way more benefits than 10 hours of noise you aren’t paying attention to.

The few benefits

Of course, there are some reasons that passive hearing can be beneficial.

However, it’s important to be aware of precisely what these reasons are! I am not writing this article to tell people to turn off their streaming radio or stop listening to podcasts – (I even wrote a post recently about how to find podcasts!) I want people to stop deluding themselves that it counts as their main useful step to fluency that deserves all the time it gets.

Here are some benefits, with some warnings:

• In early stages, a language really feels like noise. If you have it on in the background you can get used to how it generally sounds and it seems less foreign. You don’t need to focus on it to get this feeling. I am attempting this with Hungarian to get used to the sound of the language before getting full-time exposure to it. But this is just familiarity for emotional comfort (which is indeed important) – it is not actual comprehension. Hearing Hungarian for years without actively analysing it (or better yet, using it with natives) will get me nowhere.
• @don_rivers compared it to having coffee on your desk. You can take “sips” whenever you feel it’s important and tune in and focus when you decide to. I’d still argue that the times between the “sips” are only useful in that you are saved the “hard work” of pressing a button, and it otherwise doesn’t help. A solid distinction of right now I am focused on learning the language will help a lot of people, and they lose this if they vaguely tune in and out.
• Even when not paying attention, your subconscious will be on the look-out for certain things. It’s like how we suddenly hear our name from across the room in a noisy party from a conversation we weren’t paying attention to. When listening to news etc. in a foreign language, you will hear key words you learned and might decide to tune in and focus then. I recognised “egy” (one) on streamed Hungarian radio and this is a confidence booster. But a thousand hours to get these minor buzzes is not worth it. The feeling is much better with natives.
• @danielpwright says it is to be preferred over English (or your native tongue), if you  can’t actively listen/converse right now, although I would say this is just marginally better than nothing if you aren’t giving it your attention. It’s better to find some way to actively listen or converse rather than feel like you have done your language-learning work for the day.

Be more active!

I’m not trying to rain on people’s parade here – I just want learners to be clear about the fact that they need to put time into lots of different aspects of learning a language (especially speaking it). By all means, continue passively listening, but be aware of its usefulness so you try other learning approaches too and give them the time they deserve. Don’t use hearing “something” all day to get out of the guilt of not doing any real work!

Give the audio your full attention and analyse it. Even if just for a few minutes. This was my main mistake in my thousand-hour experiment. What I should have done was close my computer screen and give the audio my full focus for at least 5-10 minute segments and replay it if possible until I understood it all.

Having the radio/podcast on in the background isn’t doing you any “harm”, it can only help – the harm is in people’s understanding of how much it helps. If they think it helps more than it actually does, they may put less work into way more useful things.

Of course, my criticism on passive listening here is not related to active listening. But I’d argue that most people with their target language on in the background in some audible format, simply don’t pay attention to it, thinking that their brain is processing it magically for them. Even if this were true, without your focus you are getting a minuscule (maybe 1%?) amount of the benefit that some focus would give in a way smaller timeframe.

Rather than thinking that many hours a day “doing something” counts, take small parts of your day and do some active learning! Read in the language and try to understand as much of it as possible, listen to online radio but try to make notes of what is being said and use a dictionary if necessary – and most important of all find natives and speak to them - there is nothing stopping you from trying.

I like to study using SRS, and sometimes this gets as little as just two minutes when I’m on the metro or otherwise waiting somewhere. But that is two minutes of my full undivided attention. This is the only way to make useful progress in a language.

So please – stop trying to do everything at once! Be active with your language, even if that just involves actively listening. I would, of course, highly recommend finding ways to converse with natives as soon as possible.

Looking forward to your comments as always! Since I’m dropping a bombshell on a very much loved pastime of a lot of people, I expect some disagreement – but keep it relevant and insult-free or I’ll eat your comment up! I have my nom-nom-nom finger posed!

Share this on Facebook and twitter if you think more people need a fire lit under their asses!
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• The stone of Rosetta & multilingual Language Hacking Guide 2.0

NOTE: The Language Hacking Guide is now available to be read in its entirety in six languages (seven next week), translated by natives.

The stone of Rosetta

You might think that this post has something to do with expensive yellow boxes that you can buy at airports with language learning software. Nope.

The Rosetta stone is, in my opinion, one of the coolest contributions to languages of modern times, and I’ll refer to it as the stone of Rosetta so that there is no confusion. The people who wrote the software program are very clever for using that title, but I find it frustrating that the name is associated with them now for many people more than with the original “language hack”.

Before the Rosetta Stone was discovered and then deciphered, there had been no understanding of the ancient Egyptian language, which appears in pyramids and in other incredible sites, since shortly before the fall of the Roman Empire. For 14 centuries, even the Egyptians themselves were incapable of reading hieroglyphics.

The stone was discovered in 1799 and immediately seen as the key to understanding all the ancient writings of the Egyptians: it’s a tri-lingual translation of a decree for King Ptolemy V, created around 200 BCE, in hieroglyphics, Egyptian demotic script (closer to the spoken language at the time) and ancient Greek. Since scholars knew ancient Greek, it was a simple (well actually it took about 20 years and a lot of ingenuity) case of comparing the Greek to the hieroglyphics.

This one stone, and one translation opened up the doors to a world of Egyptian history and culture, turning their writings from mere random scribbles of images into a readable language. As a language buff, I was in awe of getting to see it in person at the London Museum, as this one translation did indeed change the world as we know it.

The “stone of Rosetta” method: reading equivalent translations

I am sure some clever linguists will educate me on the official terminology, but I like to think of the stone of Rosetta method as one of the oldest, and still quite an effective way to learn a foreign language.

You read a text in your mother tongue and then with the full idea of it in your head, you read the target language equivalent translation (obviously only a good quality translation). Rather than using a dictionary (which sometimes can give you translations in the wrong context, or generally be frustrating to use to look up words) you can refer back to the full translation in your own language to compare what you don’t understand.

Since you have already read the text and understood it entirely, your focus changes to allow you to get into the flow of the language much more and this can help your progress a lot.

For centuries many people got their first exposure to foreign languages by reading translations of the bible in that language, knowing the original off by heart.

If it worked well to decipher Ancient Egyptian, then I’m sure it can help us a little to improve our French, Spanish etc.

You don’t even have to read to apply this method – I used to watch way too much TV when I was younger and could almost recite the entire script of some episodes of The Simpsons, so it actually helped my Spanish comprehension a lot to watch the dubbed Los Simpson when I moved to Spain. I didn’t need subtitles; I already knew what they were saying and associated the Spanish words much quicker than getting distracted by reading subtitles.

This greatly improves learning speed because you are focused more on the flow, rather than on the meaning of every single word, since you already understand what you are reading.

Multilingual Language Hacking Guide

With this in mind, I have taken my Language Hacking Guide, which explains precisely how you can speak languages from the first week and improve towards fluency very quickly thanks to lots of confident practise, and had it fully translated. All 33,000+ words of it have been translated by natives to the languages listed below.

Since the techniques I discuss are equally valid for all languages, I wanted to still give people an edge on the actual language they are interested in learning. My hope is that they will attempt to read the guide in that language. In doing so, they will be applying the tips of immediate immersion (albeit just in reading form in this case) discussed in the guide. They can refer to the copy in their mother tongue to help them understand. I’ll be using the guide myself in future to learn languages as I have them translated to these languages.

These translations also allow non-native English speakers to read it in their mother tongue. All translators worked hard to make sure that my ideas and voice were maintained, as well as re-wording things so that they sounded more natural in that language.

The languages included in this update are:

• French, translated by Christine Schmit, professional translator from Luxembourg. Title: Domptez les langues étrangères
• Portuguese, translated by Leticia Dáquer, professional translator from Rio – I worked in a translator traineeship in the same company as her in Italy. Wouldn’t have had anyone else translate it to Portuguese but her! Title: Guia para hackear línguas
• Spanish, translated by Alex Arroyo from Mexico. He has an engineering background like me, but is gaining a passion for languages. Ridiculously nice and clever guy! Title: El manual del superpolíglota
• Italian, translated by Andrea Piu from Sardinia, another translator with a varied work background like myself. Title: Il manuale del superpoliglotta
• German, translated by Bleicke Peterson from Germany. He was happy to help me promote my learning method over the academic approach. Title: Der Fremdsprachen-Hacker

Next weekend I’ll send an update with a Polish translation, and in 2 months I’ll send the Greek, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Esperanto, Hebrew, Dutch and Russian translations. The price will go up when I add the next group of translations, but they will all be sent for free to anyone who gets a copy in the mean time.

I’m hoping to include many more translations in the update in 2 months, so if you are a native of any language not listed and are interested in translating (payment is based on sales that the translators themselves make), please contact me if you have time this summer.

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I’ll be starting my next mission (already announced on Facebook) next week! But first, I’ll get my German exam results on Monday and let you know how it went! It won’t make the slightest difference, but any pagan luck rituals of knocking on wood, throwing salt behind you or crossing fingers, will be appreciated for the sentiment!

On Friday I’ll make a special birthday request so look out for that post! (Thursday in the e-mail list)

Note to “enthusiastic” commenters: While I welcome pretty much all comments, if you plan on complaining that quality unique content costs money, and that I also need to keep my lights on, please save your breath as I will delete all pointlessly negative and irrelevant comments. Over 95% of the content I write on the blog and in the e-mail list is completely free, and sales from the Language Hacking Guide will help me devote even more time to providing more free content to inspire others to take on the language learning challenge.

Looking forward to hearing from you all! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to watch a football match with tens of thousands of Germans!
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Now that I’ve sat three of these diploma examinations (French, Spanish and German), I feel like I can give a useful summary for those curious!

When I introduced my current mission, I only quickly mentioned some details about the exam and what it exists for. They do indeed serve much more of a purpose than just for crazy Irish guys to sit them for ambitious 3 month missions! In today’s post I’ll describe the A1-C2 certificate process in much more detail.

Why sit them?

These certificates can be very useful to have on your CV/résumé, and they generally have no expiry date.

Self-evaluation of your language level may not be taken seriously by employers who truly require language skills, such as in the tourism and translation industry. A lot of companies in Europe are familiar with the CEFRL grading system and may even require recognised certification in the languages you claim to speak well.

Certain levels of these certificates are also pre-requisites to study at universities full time in those countries. This is by far the most common reason for young people to sit these exams. Most of those I met at the French, Spanish and German exams needed the certificates to be able to start studying a Masters locally, or even to begin a 4 year degree programme if they are not nationals of the country in question.

One other reason however, which is why I have always sat them, is to have a target to aim for to force myself to improve my language skills quicker than if I was just vaguely aiming to “improve”.

This has advantages and disadvantages though. I generally don’t place much importance on my writing skills or ability to analyse and discuss printed text in a foreign language, and these are requirements for all exams. Nearly all advice I give on this blog is linked directly to my focus in learning languages: to speak fluently with natives. The oral aspect of the exam tests this quite well, but this can contribute only 20% to your chances of passing in many cases.

Having said that, for many people writing and reading are just as important as speaking so it’s good for them to have everything tested. I will personally not be sitting a test like this again for a while as I have little patience for studying for long periods of time due to how little that contributes to actual ability to converse.

I have some interesting ideas to make it easier to pass these tests (language exam hacking if you will, but definitely not cheating!) and I will find out in 2 weeks if the work I put in to this ridiculously tight 3 month challenge to C2 was enough to get an overall pass in German. Even if it wasn’t, the work I put in to improve all aspects of my German has worked for my purposes and I’m very happy with the progress I’ve made in the last months!

What organisations provide the certification?

The Common European Framework of References for Languages (CEFRL) is a language level evaluation system, which is used as a standard in Europe. Some Universities may use it, but the exams that I discuss here are for examination members of the ALTE group (see bullet list below) and are implemented by several major European language institutions. When used by these institutions it is not just any old university with a lazy language course or “Micky Mouse” certification that you can buy online – in many cases it is administered by the organisations that govern official modern usage of the language itself and is the most recognised certification in the world for many languages.

Being the organisation that promotes the language worldwide also means that they take pride in the levels expected of speakers and passing the highest level is no easy task. However, since they are indeed promotional, they attempt to make the exam as human as possible, while keeping it academic and following a standard exam layout. If the Alliance Française say you speak French at the level you passed then few people can ever doubt it.

Certification of this kind exists for almost every official European language. The best part is that you can sit them in many countries (depending on the language), not just where the language is spoken. In many cases no travel is required - most major capital cities have branches of the first three institutes mentioned below, as well as many others. In some cases they may only allow you to sit the highest level exam in the country itself. I think this is a good idea, as you would very likely need full time exposure to realistically attempt to pass them. For lower levels, you can just sit them at home though!

To be more specific, here are some examples and links to more information about these certificates. Read these websites for information regarding fees, testing locations, test dates, requirements, example tests etc.

• German: the Goethe Institut
• French: the Alliance Française
• Spanish: Instituto de Cervantes (click ‘English‘ on the left)
• Irish: TEG
• Italian: CELI (page only in Italian)
• English: Cambridge exams
• For all other language exams (Portuguese, Greek, Czech etc.), check out the ALTE list of members

How does it work?

The layout of exams are somewhat different to one another and some have particular requirements that others do not. For example, in the German exam I had to read two (small) novels in advance that I could choose to answer questions on in the written part of the test, and in the French exam you have to choose a specialisation subject in the DALF level exams. Neither of these were a requirement in my Spanish DELE however.

What they do have in common is the European standard grading system of A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, (A1 is the lowest, C2 is the highest) although what each of these actually means is debatable. Here (PDF link) is a vague self-assessment guideline of what these levels may mean. Some Universities may only require a B2 to attend their courses, which means that you can indeed communicate in the language, but still not very confidently. But a lot of universities do require a C1 or C2 to attend particular courses, which are very hard to pass.

The C2 level does not imply that you would be mistaken for a native – you can still make mistakes, have an accent, and stumble a little, but otherwise you must be able to confidently express yourself and understand in many normal situations, without the use of any dictionaries etc. I decided to aim for C2 in German and Spanish simply because it would force me to attempt to reach this level or very near it, as long as I take it seriously of course. My first attempt at a CEFRL test was the French B2 and I did not find it enough of a challenge to push me to improve my French quickly. Going for a more ‘realistic’ lower level may not be a problem for most people though, as the pressure of a looming C2 when you are far from ready can be quite stressful.

The basic components of the exams also tend to be quite similar: they usually have five sections: Oral (spoken), Aural (listening), Reading, Writing and Grammar. Grammar may be counted as within the “reading” section, but you will almost always find complex questions to test your technical understanding of the language.

If I needed these exams for the purposes of studying then I would have aimed for the minimum level required to be more sure of passing it. One other issue is that the higher levels are always more expensive. The price varies considerably – between €30 and almost €300 depending on the language and the level.

As suggested in the post title, one thing that sets these certificates apart from simply studying the language at university is that you do not need to attend classes. With this in mind, the couple of hundred Euro seems a lot cheaper than the thousands of Euro required for expensive courses or years at university. You still need to do a lot of preparation, and private lessons would not go astray if combined with studying past exams and books made specifically for that exam. The language institutes themselves will almost always provide courses tailor-made for the exams, but they tend to be quite expensive so I have never attended these.

Since you don’t need to attend any classes, you really can just sign up for the exam (a few weeks in advance), show up on the written test day and oral test day, and then get the certificate after the time it takes for correction. No messy bureaucracy involved!

My most recent C2 exam attempt

It turns out that the German ZOP (C2) exam requires just over two weeks for correction. So on July 12th I’ll get my results!

I had been learning Spanish for about a year (from scratch) when I sat and passed the DELE Superior (C2), so I might be pushing it too far this time to attempt to get a C2 in just 3 months. Of course, I’ll be disappointed if I don’t pass, but my main purpose for this exam was always to force myself to learn as much as possible in a short time, by seriously attempting to reach the minimum pass grade, and that aspect of the mission has been a great success!

I’m very pleased with the progress I made and the realistic attempt I gave in the exam, even if I miss the pass just by a few percent. Aiming so high and reaching what I did means that I am confident that I would definitely pass the C1 (one level below) if I were to sit it.

As far as the contents of the exam itself go, I am confident that I passed several parts (most likely written, reading and oral), but the aural part had some tricky questions that I may not have answered satisfactorily and the grammar part requires skills that I found frustrating (and frankly, unnatural) to have to work on (such as taking a pre-made sentence starting with a preposition + noun and reforming it to start with a conjunction + verb while keeping the meaning exactly the same – yes it is as much fun as it sounds…)

Despite certain questions, I did find the exam overall to be a very fair and challenging evaluation of level, just as other ones I have sat have been. Rather than be a big cry baby and blaming the exam, if I don’t pass it will simply be because I haven’t reached C2 level yet, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, I still believe I may have a chance of passing (it’s quite hard to tell) so I will reserve any judgement until July 12th.

Sitting an exam that tests all aspects of a language has required me to stay indoors and study a lot, so I think I will focus just on my conversational fluency for the next while in German and other languages. Being forced to study so much has helped me refine and improve my study technique, and this will ultimately help me to help others learn languages, and give me an edge for short study bursts. However, I will definitely not be studying so intensively for quite a while, as that only takes away from time that I could be actually conversing in the language.

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I usually start speaking a new language from day one, but I’ll attempt to do some focused study for two weeks before I start speaking my next 3-month-mission language! Let’s see if these study techniques make a difference, or I if I stick to the belief that you should dive in immediately and stop waiting so much. For me 2 weeks is already a long time to be focused on a language and not be practising it!

But first, I need a break and a chance to appreciate Berlin! In the mornings I can get the Language Hacking Guide version 2.0 ready – next week the entire contents of the guide will be in seven languages in one download (free upgrade for all those that bought it already), translated laboriously by natives. Hopefully I’ll have the time to redesign a few things on the site too. But in the afternoons/evenings, I will be out and enjoying this amazing city!

I’ll announce the next 3-month mission on the blog just after I get the results of the German exam – otherwise I’ll continue attempting to improve my German for the rest of my stay here. If you missed the announcement in the Language Hacking League, then don’t forget to ‘like’ FI3M’s Facebook page to see it announced there this weekend!

Since I have done practically no work at all in reducing my accent (this was not a requirement of the oral exam other than for the purposes of being easy to understand), it will be hard to achieve that aspect of my initial goals in just a few weeks, but I will certainly try! Nothing is impossible if you keep trying! Although in future, I think I’ll just have one ridiculously ambitious goal per 3-month mission

Have any of you sat CEFRL tests? What have your experiences been? Share them with us below!
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Can you guess what I’m thinking from looking at my expression in the photo?

When I run into some study-focused learners and the discussion turns to languages, sometimes I honestly feel like we are talking about completely different things. A lot of them like talking about subjunctives, past participles, cases and word roots, conjugations, tone rules and so on. If you are a grammarian or academic then these things can lead to fascinating discussions if you are into that.

However, I find focusing entirely on such details to be unhelpful if you actually want to communicate with natives in your target language.

The way I see it, it’s like Chemistry professors discussing cooking. The Chemist could say NaHCO₃ + KHC₄H₄O₆ —-> KNaC₄H₄O₆ + H₂O + CO₂ and see how great that is, but cooks usually just say that they added Baking soda to Cream of tartar. Chemical formulae are interesting and practical in so many ways (I’d hate to think where would we be today without amazing advances in chemistry!) but actually quite useless to cooks.

Grammar isn’t “useless” to language learners, but devoting nearly all of your energy to it is wasteful if your end-goal is anything but to pass an exam about grammar.

Someone who focuses on grammar will become a grammar expert, and someone who focuses on vocabulary will become a walking dictionary, but if they want to communicate with natives they need to turn their attention to other crucial aspects of communication!

Non verbal skills: Sometimes way more important than the verbal ones

One statistic you may have already heard about that I find useful to illustrate this point is from a UCLA study, suggesting that as much as 93% of communication may be from aspects unconnected to the words we use. This study focused on feelings and attitudes (obviously in other contexts, words convey ideas much better), but that’s a pretty powerful statistic. Only 7% from the actual words you use…

That figure is a little too precise, but in my experience it is quite accurate! I’ve run into a lot of language learners who, on paper, “speak” the language way better than I do. They have gotten As in their exams, they can explain the intricacies of the most complex grammar to you and they know obscure words of the foreign language. And yet they can’t converse with anyone in that language. If the goal is to be able to understand everything in a written text then they’ll likely do better than me, but in real life the cat almost always has their tongue.

What separates such theoretically better learners from actual speakers of the language, is the latter’s focus on communication. Making the mistakes and getting out there and speaking as soon as possible.

As well as that, there are ways they need to communicate that are never covered in grammar books, and at best will be occasional asides in more cultural based language learning courses: How we communicate between the words. As far as I’m concerned this is even more important than the content of the language. You can convey a lot of information in body language, facial expressions, volume and tone of the words you use, use of spacing and precisely what you do between the words, as well as your clothes, behaviour and even when knowing that you shouldn’t say or do something.

Cultural and social aspects are bigger aspects of communication than grammar and vocabulary ever could be.

Interesting example: Italian squillo

I went into great detail into how to become more active in conversations and how to genuinely interact with natives, despite lack of vocabulary etc., using such non-verbal techniques in the Guide. One or two specific suggestions have gotten quite a lot of great responses from people, so I might elaborate much more in later blog posts.

However, one different example I’d like to point out today is the squillo in Italy. This form of communication also exists between certain friends/family members elsewhere and to a certain extent in many other countries, but I’ve personally found its use in Italy to be much broader.

Squillo simply means a “ring” (on the telephone), but is more precisely thought of as a missed call. This missed call can have dozens of meanings, none of which are explained beforehand. In English speaking countries I have heard people say “I’ll give you a missed call when I’m arriving” etc., but its use in Italy and some other places goes way beyond this.

This took me by surprise as I would get so many missed calls (seeing who it was from caller ID) when living in Italy. At first, I thought it was a means of the other person not having to pay and thought it was rather rude of them to expect me to call back just so they could save money, but that wasn’t it. It wasn’t because I would actually “miss” the call, since I would have my mobile on me all the time. There would never be a pre-made agreement (like I’ll give a missed call when I am ready to leave etc.) and yet it’s meaning would always be clear from the context.

A squillo means I’m thinking of you, or Hey, how are you doing? or Sorry, I’m running late or I’m at your door, come down now! or Where the hell are you!? or many many other things. If you agreed to meet someone at 9pm and at 9:10 you get a squillo, it’s pretty clear that it means the third one. If you get a squillo from a girl you’re seeing it can mean the first one. The context is pretty clear. No SMS needs to be sent, no phonecall needs to be made (unless the context indicates they are low on credit, e.g. two squilli in succession), and most of the time you don’t even need to acknowledge it with a return squillo.

No words are written or spoken, and yet a full communicative message is exchanged.

Since the phone call never actually connects, it doesn’t cost you anything. It’s a very clever means of communication. In Spain I’ve heard them say “dame un toque” and in France they request a “bip”, but up to now Italy wins in broadness of applications of the squillo. Foreigners would go as far as to simply use the Italian word when speaking English/French etc. – it just doesn’t translate that well.

As a means of communication, I love it! No amount of grammar studies can get your head around its use – this is understanding the human context of your relationship to the caller and what you are planning that day.

Work much more on the 93% part of communication

You would find yourself more accepted in social circles abroad if you tried to focus more on how locals are acting, rather than only on what they are saying. How are they sitting? How fast do they walk? How loud do they talk? (um, sorry to my American readers, but seriously, you should turn down the volume switch a little when speaking certain languages!! )

In some of my language missions, I like to attempt to pass off as a local. It’s pointed out to me very frequently how “impossible” this is because you can never lose your accent. What they fail to realise is that the accent reduction is just a small part of what you need to do to achieve this. Someone with an absolutely perfect accent, intonation, grammar etc. will still be seen as a foreigner 2 seconds into a conversation because of their posture, clothing, tone of voice, lack of native body language, inability to pick up on important social queues etc.

My idea of really studying a language, is to observe and emulate people speaking it. This has ultimately led to me being confused for a local in many occasions, even though a few grammar and pronunciation mistakes might slip through that are seen as too subtle when compared to my more local body language.

This is why this blog talks so much about the social aspect of learning a language. It is essential! I’ll occasionally make some grammar or vocabulary references, but frankly the 93% aspect of communication is way more important. If I can’t express myself as a local would before I even open my mouth, then anything I do say is going to sound even stranger, whether I have lots of mistakes in my words or not.

If I was designing a Brazilian Portuguese course, I’d have a whole section about how much warmer and friendlier you have to be. When people ask me advice for speaking Italian I tell them about how the Italian shrug works, combined with “boh!” long before I talk about conjugations. If you plan on living in France, you should learn how to drink un café like the French do.

All of these are aspects of communication and interaction with locals. Why they aren’t on almost any language courses boggles the mind.

The solution? Stop bloody studying and interact with people in the language! Or if you watch a foreign language TV show or movie, pay attention to how they act as well as trying to understand what they are saying.

The best news is that the vast majority of this unspoken communication is actually international! There are always exceptions that need to be learned, but most of the time a grimace, point, touch on the shoulder or warm smile will get you much further in terms of communication than words ever can.

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People have already booked 18 language coaching sessions in just one week! Contact me to book today if you are interested too!

For those curious, I am studying (grumble) really hard these days to try my best to pass the German C2 exam. All this study is frankly getting in the way of trying to improve my spoken German! I have two weeks to try to see if I can hack the C2 exam a second time despite the tighter timeframe… whether I will or not, I look forward to getting out a lot more after the exam and speaking German, reducing my accent and adapting to German mannerisms as well as I can to attempt to convince them I’m one of them before I leave

Am I really that crazy to think that there is more to attempting immersion in a foreign culture than the 7% that most courses seem to be so obsessed with? Let me know in the comments!
Similar Posts:

• How to practise a foreign language for free without travelling
• Starting to learn a language with the right attitude
• Just 2 weeks learning Esperanto can get you months ahead in your target language
• Why studying will never help you speak a language
• The smartest decision you will ever make to achieve fluency

Whenever I meet new people and try to help them with their language learning missions, when they hear that I have already learned to speak a few languages and ask me to list them, the one that always gets their attention the most is Esperanto.

Most people have never even heard of it, but occasionally they say that they thought it was dead and that maybe I learned it as an alternative to Klingon or Na’vi just for the hell of it, since “nobody actually speaks it”.

Well, today I am going to make a suggestion that I included as one of many other language hacks in the Language Hacking Guide, and it has nothing to do with saving the world, or peace and love between all races with a universal language. I don’t learn Esperanto to aim for a better world some day – to me it has very practical uses right now to me and to many learners.

Even if it had no speakers, it would still be very useful

In fact, let’s pretend that nobody actually speaks Esperanto.

In this hypothetical universe, there is just material online to learn it and one guy on Skype in Yemen who is willing to chat to you in it. Even in this situation, I still say that if you aren’t speaking your target language yet (Spanish, Japanese, Russian or whatever it may be), then devoting two weeks to Esperanto can get you months ahead in that language.

If you already speak several languages then this particular language hack will be lost on you, but for those of you still behind the “barrier” of actually conversing, this may be just what the doctor ordered!

One big criticism I have for many traditional learning systems is the obsession with studying (a.k.a. input if you like thinking of humans as the same as robots) because they see a language as nothing more than pure information and totally ignore the social aspect of it. You need to get over the barrier of feeling embarrassed, and simply not used to a foreign language. This is the strangest part of learning any language.

“Skip” the hardest first foreign language bit

Why should you learn Esperanto? Because it’s easy.

I don’t actually like using the word “hard” with languages – I think it’s counterproductive to randomly assign negativity, which will do absolutely nothing to actually help you learn a language. But anyway, if you are curious (I do get asked this a lit) the “hardest” language I ever learned and ever will learn was… Spanish. Yep – no matter what language you suggest in the world, Spanish will always have been the hardest one for me.

Not because of the subjunctive, or tables of conjugations or any of the other things that pessimists drool over when they get ready to compile a list of reasons to discourage people. It’s because it was the first foreign language that I ever tried to speak. It doesn’t matter about the grammar and vocabulary so much when you just are not used to any foreign language coming out of your mouth. This barrier is a tough nut to crack and extra work of needing to worry about conjugations, cases, word genders etc. are generally going to add to this pressure.

The reason I’m suggesting Esperanto for 2 weeks is because it is very easy (no word genders, no conjugation, perfectly phonetic, no random rule exceptions, easy consistent vocabulary). If you are truly devoted and have a lot less to randomly whine about, then in just a couple of weeks you can focus entirely on communication with way less study. You will recognise thousands of words already since most of the vocabulary is based on European languages like French, but there is some English in there too! For example, Yes is pronounced exactly the same (spelled as “jes”).

If you are fully devoted for two weeks, and in the second week do genuinely try to speak it in a chatroom or on Skype, you will be forced to use what you have learned, but you won’t have to think too hard to do it. If you are dedicated enough (and use some hacks to make sure you are speaking quicker) you could do this in a very short time. You will get over this speaking barrier and be communicating in a foreign language! You would need more than 2 weeks to speak fluently, but you can indeed speak it and get by in this time.

And then something amazing happens – that target language, the one you really want to speak (for moving to France, trying to rediscover your Chinese roots etc.) suddenly becomes your second foreign language! You already “speak” one, so you have gained this confidence that seemed so unobtainable before, and now you will have that extra edge where you actually want it.

The polyglot edge

It won’t surprise you to hear that the more languages you learn, the easier it is to learn the next one. If both me and a monoglot decide to take on language x at the same time, I’ll very likely learn it quicker than he will. This isn’t because I’m smarter, or because of mysterious reconfigurations within my brain. It’s because of techniques, familiarity and confidence. As far as I’m concerned these 3 aspects are the only things that separate me from people still speaking just one language as far as taking on a new language is concerned.

There are plenty of techniques, and familiarity plays a big part too, but the confidence to actually speak will hold you back if you don’t have it, even if you know a language inside out. If you can use Esperanto to hack your way towards this confidence quicker, then you will have it for your “second” foreign language; the priority language you definitely want to speak. You will know that you can communicate in a foreign language. You’ll have the polyglot edge.

This isn’t just my opinion. Several studies have shown that learning Esperanto first will give you that edge. For example, students learned Esperanto for six months and then French for a year and a half. Another control group studied just French for two years – so they had several months more studies in that language. And yet the first group that got “side-tracked” to learn Esperanto had significantly better command of French.

They needed to do it over the long term since this would have been done using the academic approach. As a language hacker, you would only need two weeks (maybe more if you can’t be very committed).

This post isn’t to convince the world that we all need a universal language. The point is that learning a language that is easy will get you miles ahead. Your actual target language will likely have some tricky things to learn that you will have to master if you are to speak it confidently. But simple confidence in itself won’t come to you unless you start speaking a language. It’s a vicious circle.

One way I get out of this circle myself is to speak as often as possible as early as possible. But it’s easy for me to say this because I have done it already before. Once you do it once, every time after that becomes so much easier.

So why not make the “first” time you do it all about communication with almost no technical grammar etc. to worry about so you can get over this barrier once and for all?

Oh yeah, the language itself is cool

Esperanto fits the bill because it was designed to be easy and material to learn it is very easy to come across. As well as this there are a lot of speakers who will be happy to help you, both online and in lots of places in person.

As I said at the start, even if there was just one guy to talk to and the material available to study, it would still work for the purposes described here. What is actually true is that there are millions of Esperanto speakers all over the world. I’ve met up with them many times and had lots of fun (click the last link to see me trying out my pathetic skills as an actor in the language).

I’m not looking for an ideal utopian society when I go to these week-long events where everything (karaokes, dinner menus, games, tours…) is in Esperanto. I go to find people I get along with really well, since there are a surprisingly large number of other polyglots, travellers, vegetarians, Linux users, non-drinkers and many open-minded people there.

There are lots of large events all around the world, or you can just find some speakers in your city to practise with, although you can already do a lot online. The Internet has plenty of Esperanto content; the Esperanto Wikipedia has more than 130,000 entries (more than Arabic). You can find an active forum and a fantastic free learning resource (with a great language learning course, a dictionary, a chat room etc.) on Lernu.net (the entire website is available in several languages).

The language sounds pleasant to listen to and has lots of easy to recognise words similar to English, French/Spanish/Italian and German. In fact, the content (not just the confidence) of Esperanto will help you in learning a lot of European languages! When I tried to learn German in school, the Accusative seemed very complicated. Even the name sounds like you are blaming someone. The accusative exists in Esperanto (it’s one of the very few bits of grammar, there only so you can have any word order you like), but its use is a lot clearer. Getting used to it there meant that it wasn’t so weird to add an -n in German either.

When I tried to learn Czech, the writing system of having “hats” on a letter like s and c didn’t seem strange at all, since Esperanto does this to make the language phonetic (s = s but ŝ = sh for example).

Even if you are learning a non-European language, the confidence you would gain in being able to communicate would bring you miles ahead. As I said, this lack of confidence in speaking a language is one of the main reasons people simply don’t.

If you can start communicating basically in one language for the investment of just a few weeks, then you wouldn’t have to wait the months you would have to otherwise with your target language. I think Esperanto is worth checking out beyond that, but even if all you are interested in is reaching spoken confidence in your actual target language – this small investment could make a big difference.

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So what do you think? If you have not been able to speak your target language yet, do you think that this injection of confidence of becoming multilingual in a short time will make a difference? Would you care to continue with Esperanto after that to make sure you were communicating much better? Think Esperanto sounds interesting enough to check out?

Let me know in the comments!
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• Why studying will never help you speak a language
• How to become a polyglot
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This post has been a long time coming.

Teachers and linguists are going to hate me for this, but it has to be said:

You can never speak a language by just studying it, no matter how much you study

Yes, you read that right. Studying is the wrong thing to do if you want to speak a language. I’m totally serious.

Last night I ran into some English speakers and heard the same thing I’ve heard thousands of times about other languages: they have been studying German for years and don’t speak it yet, even though they now live in Berlin.

Every day, I get dozens of e-mails from aspiring language hackers sharing their tales of woe with me; they’ve spent a small fortune on workbooks, CD audio courses etc. and have spent probably thousands of hours locked up in their rooms studying tables of rules and vocabulary lists. And they still can’t say anything.

Most people think the reason that this happens is because the material/teacher isn’t good enough. Or perhaps the language really is impossible and it’s the “hardest one in the world”.

I get asked all the time what my study method is, and precisely what books I buy. If our study materials were better then surely we’d finally speak!?

No.

There is only one thing study is good for

The purpose of this post isn’t to tell the world to stop studying. However, you have to realise that studying a language has a very specific purpose and if you are not aware of this then you may end up stuck in the vicious circle of never speaking: Studying will never help you speak a language, but (as long as you do it right) studying will help you speak a language better.

Most people don’t see the difference here. That one crucial word changes absolutely everything you need to take into consideration.

If you already speak but your conjugations aren’t great or you need to quickly increase your store of vocabulary about a specific topic, then by all means study. Need to pass a test in school? Sure, study for it. When the goal is to pass a test or improve your grasp on something specific, then study is the way to go.

But if you don’t speak the language confidently right now, then it’s time someone broke this news to you: studying is not the way to get this confidence!

But I’m almost ready!

When you study, you acquire vocabulary, you improve your grammar and you do exercises. Logically enough, your level improves. With time, your potential increases and you can understand more and you can theoretically join in on a wider scope of conversations. “One day”, when you’re ready, you can finally start speaking confidently. Not today though – maybe you just need to study a little bit more.

Theoretically & Maybe.

Based on my experience and accounts from thousands of learners I’ve met who need their language in the real world (not tests), “theoretically and maybe” translate to never. The academic system seems to have drilled into us that studying is the way to speak a language. Studying helps you improve (and to pass a test you do indeed need to know your grammar/vocab better… because that’s what the test is usually about) but it is an artificial means of acquiring or improving the language. Some artificial ways are quite useful, but they are still artificial.

When you look at a language the same way you look at geography or history or other subjects in school that can be tested, then you simply don’t know what a language actually is.

Stop looking at conversations with human beings as a test that you have to pass (so, every time you make a mistake you get a big red X and if you make a certain amount of them, then you fail). It doesn’t work like that!!

A language is a means of communication. It’s not a table of grammar rules in some dusty old book, or a piece of paper that you have to spread ink across in the right way for your teacher to be happy. German isn’t a rough sounding collection of Datives and Accusatives, it’s families sharing what they did that day. Czech isn’t a frustrating collection of consonant clusters, it’s young couples flirting with one another and someone buying his morning bread.

These are not things that you can put under a microscope. They are people living their lives and sharing experiences with one another. That is what a language is for. When you are locked away in your room you are avoiding this contact and that’s why so many people never speak. They still think about everything they don’t know and see the world that speaks their target language as one big test that they are doomed to fail.

How do you learn to speak then?

So, if studying isn’t how you learn to speak a language, then what is? I’ll tell you, and it’s going to blow your mind.

Are you ready?

Are you sitting down? Brace yourself!

You have to speak it! Yes, I know – it sounds absolutely crazy, doesn’t it! To speak a language you have to actually speak it.

It will be hard at first – you won’t know how to say things, it will be embarrassing, you’ll hesitate a lot and feel frustrated that you can’t say things precisely the way you want to. This will happen even if you study for decades. Until you actually use the language in its natural context (or at least in a course that gets you to speak to people) you will always have this barrier to get through. You simply have to break through it. If you practise often enough and enthusiastically enough you will get to the other side quite quickly. You can do this in person if there are natives or other learners close by, or over the Internet with millions of natives.

However, you can’t study to get this confidence. Confidence isn’t hidden somewhere on page 182, it’s getting into an actual conversation and proving to yourself (Obama style) yes you can.

Too many people study to gain confidence – this is an oblique way of going about it. You have to simply get used to speaking the language. Know how it feels to have the words come out of you rather than in an artificial test in which you have several minutes to think about things.

Last night with the English speakers I had the almost magic ability to turn them into German speakers with nothing more than a 5 minute pep-talk to boost their confidence and give them some language hacks. I didn’t teach them any actual German or tell them to study in a particular way. They had the potential to speak the entire time, no matter what their level was.

You haven’t learned enough to say anything yet? Hogwash! In many European languages you have thousands of words before you even start. In all languages you can study for a couple of hours (rather than years) to get basic phrases and then use them. Use what you know and go from there. Then you will see what you do need to work on (usually it will be something very specific and relevant to your situation rather than “chapters 1 to 7″), and then very specific study will help you improve how you are speaking so you will be able to express yourself a little better. But you already have the ability to say something right now.

There are a LOT of ways you can speak a language in the first weeks even if you didn’t study it much yet. So many ways that I had to write 30,000 words to describe them.

So what do you think? Picking on the academic system is such an easy target because it does such a miserable job in so many places and wastes the time of millions of people when it comes to language conversing ability. There are exceptions, and there are great courses to take, but that is usually because they have students converse in as natural a way as possible. Once the focus changes from studying to actually using the language to communicate with people then the road to speaking well, and doing it quickly, is opened up.

Don’t have this attitude of Leave me alone! Can’t you see I’m learning your language?

A language is a social tool and being locked up in your room studying it is, frankly, antisocial. You can’t avoid studying to improve your language skills, but if you want to speak then stop studying and just speak already!!

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Of course, I wrote in depth about how I learn to speak languages with as little study as possible in the Language Hacking Guide. If you are a blogger check out information about becoming an affiliate.

I’m sure you can all understand how passionate I am to get this message out there – speaking a language does not have to be a chore! When I hear so many people complain about grammar I feel like they are looking at their language wrong and focusing on the wrong things. Stop complaining about it and just start speaking! You’ll make mistakes, but you will get over the barrier and start on the path to fluency

Looking forward to your comments! Feel free to call me crazy (as always…), but offensive or irrelevant comments will be eaten up by the Smoke Monster from Lost.
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On Monday (17th) I’ll be releasing the Language Hacking Guide [Edit: it's available for download now!] with a detailed account of the unconventional methods I use to keep my progress and positivity up when starting to learn a strange new language, speak it my first week, and the techniques I use to reach fluency quickly and get along with native speakers while doing so (either travelling or from home), all of which can be applied by anyone. The guide includes over 30,000 words and hours of fascinating audio interviews with some of the Internet’s best known language learners, as well as worksheets, transcripts, tons of free resources, e-mail updates and more!

But it will be growing and getting updated. I’ve learned a lot in the last 7 years of trying to rapidly pick up new languages, but what has always helped more than anything has been openness to new techniques.

In today’s post I want to share with you a technique I started using just a few weeks ago that has totally transformed my vocabulary learning approach!

SRS: Spaced Repetition System

SRS is a presentation method that gives you the information before you would forget it and makes sure that it stays constantly fresh in your mind. So, you might see a word a few minutes after the first time, then a few days later, then a few weeks later etc. always at the time you need to see it most to make sure it is constantly fresh in your mind.

It’s a more complex version of the flashcard system where you have a word on one side of a card and its translation on the other. You look at the word, test yourself to see if you know it and turn over the card to see the translation. You couldn’t get more low-tech than that even if you tried, but SRS uses 21st century technology to make this possible while considering the time dimension.

So how would a guy like me who hates studying indoors, definitely dislikes flashcards and already has a pretty good learning strategy, be interested in software for improving recall of vocabulary?

Finding the time to study

Like many people, I’m a busy guy! I’m trying to work, write a book, dramatically improve my level of a language, have a social life and grocery shop/clean/sleep/eat/write blogs & e-mails/exercise etc. every day. But there are ways to make time – get it back from the time spent waiting.

Note: the next paragraphs are taken from the Language Hacking Guide

You wait for the bus/metro/train to arrive, you wait in it while going to work/school or home, you wait in the supermarket queue/line, you wait in a traffic jam in your car, you wait when ordering coffee in the morning, you wait for your water to boil if you prepare it yourself, you wait for your friend to arrive, you wait at the doctor’s/dentist’s, you even wait for a minute or two in lifts, elevators, at traffic lights, when waiting for something to load on your computer, for someone to answer the door after you knock etc.

In most of these situations you may be alone – so if you can’t talk to someone, what do you do? Stare into space? Read advertisements around you? Twiddle your thumbs? Press the pedestrian cross or lift button again in frustration that nothing has happened yet? These little segments of our day fly by unutilised and actually add up to a huge amount of time wasted. You can’t avoid these situations – they are natural parts of your day.

For most people, these little segments are annoyances – why is the other person so late? Why does there have to be so many people ahead of me in the supermarket? Why did my computer have to crash to be rebooted now of all times? Waiting in frustration is simply what we end up doing – considering how much time per day we spend doing this, this is an unneeded source of stress!

I actually don’t mind when these occasions arise! Seriously – if someone is arriving a little late, or if I just missed the bus and the next one won’t come for 15 minutes, or the Internet goes down and I can’t work – rather than cursing at my “bad luck”, and adding stress to my life by being angry during this time, I think to myself – great! Another chance to study some vocabulary!!

Improving on the old-school method

For several years, in these situations I would take out my phrasebook, or pocket vocabulary book for these moments, open it up to a random page and learn whatever I saw. Sometimes I’d see a word I never did before and sometimes I’d see something I needed to review and had already long forgotten and need to relearn rather than just remind myself. It did the job but to be honest, in retrospect it was inefficient and sloppy. (Although, if you learn by listening, these moments are good times to take out your MP3 player and press play!)

Randomly or even systematically going through vocabulary in order like this means that you might not review the hardest words when you need to, or you’ll keep seeing the easy words too often, or you’ll forget words because you didn’t review them for a very long time.

SRS answers all of these issues by letting you decide when you should see a word again based on certain criteria (usually, how hard you felt it was). So the easy words are pushed way off into the future, the hard ones keep constantly reappearing until you are finally happy with them, and the middle-difficulty ones will reappear just when you need them most, to refresh your memory.

Deciding when to study a word again when you see it in a printed list is too hard, but that’s where technology comes in!

Anki

Anki is an application developed by Damien Elmes for reviewing things you need to learn, using SRS. Not just vocabulary, but city/country capitals, medical terminology, a script for a play etc. Anything you need to apply to memory really!

It’s a completely free download (or low-bandwidth website) and works on Windows, Mac, Linux and even on mobile phones!

On the surface, the program does more or less what you would expect from a flashcard – it shows you a word with no translation (the word can be either in your native language or in the target language) and you can decide if you know what it means. Then press “Answer” and it will show it to you.

If you thought it was super easy, press the button on the right (which includes a distant time factor, depending on how you reacted to the word in previous attempts), if you had absolutely no idea press the button on the left (it will reappear very soon), and otherwise press one of the other buttons. I like having 4 levels to decide how “easy” I thought it was, and I use each one accordingly.

If it sounds drastically simple, that’s because it is! The most important part of the interface is actually pretty much just that (as you can see on the iPhone screenshot I took; similar on other systems) – the impressive part of all of this is actually the algorithm working in the background to decide precisely when to show you the words.

You don’t really have to think about that aspect though, since the system covers it for you. All you have to do is think about the word and then grade it on difficulty (hardest one if you’ve never seen it before).

Using the program

There are broadly two ways to use this application and they depend mostly on the resources available to you. Everyone can use it for free on their computer, and you can simply decide to devote 30 minutes a day to using it and make sure to set aside that time every day.

A huge amount of people have been recommending this program to me since I started this site, but I dismissed it as “not for me” without really trying it, because of how I dislike flashcards and generally don’t like sitting down to study. If you have that focus, you will get a lot of use out of this program!

Based on the time-wasting description above, you can guess where I do my studying! On the go! You can see in the post’s main picture that I even swipe it out for 2 minute waits before crossing the road!

I happen to have an iPhone (invested in it just before my laptop broke and replacing it meant I suddenly couldn’t afford to have bought an expensive Apple device, and still can’t, but that’s a sob story for another day) which is jailbroken, but if you have an Android device or Nintendo DS you can also use Anki offline (no Internet access required). If you have any other portable device that can access the basic webpages (modern mobile phone, Palm device, Sony PSP etc.) either by wifi or 3G/Edge (mobile phone network), then you can use the Anki system that way too (on a very low bandwidth website).

The way I did this was as follows: Install Anki on your computer, then download “decks” of prepared vocabulary sets to study in the language you are working on (on the Decks screen click Download – there are lots already waiting for free download!). You can also prepare the vocabulary yourself based on words you want to study, as explained in this video. If you don’t have the right mobile device, then stick to this computer interface and use it to study the words whenever you have time. Its use is pretty self-explanatory, but here are some videos of how it works.

SRS must be used with other learning strategies

Despite how obviously enthusiastically I’m sharing this system with you, it is important to be aware of the fact that it is just one way to acquire new vocabulary. The best way by far is to hear and apply it in context with native speakers. Even if you “knew” all the vocabulary in the world you still wouldn’t be able to actually apply it in actual conversations if you didn’t work on other skills important to language learning (which I discuss a lot in the Guide).

Since you are usually hearing words in isolation (although it’s possible to include example sentences), it means you have no context and this is quite an artificial way to learn words, as simple translations of something from your mother tongue, rather than understanding how to use the word itself. You can’t learn any language just by learning translations. Someone using too much SRS would not necessarily be any further along compared to someone using other strategies.

On top of this, just looking at the word is not enough and SRS can turn into nothing more than a fancy version of rote learning by pure repetition if you don’t think harder while using it. If you are exposed enough times you will be forced to remember it, but what I prefer is to try to make an image association of the word and/or to think of an example to use it in and say that to myself, so that I use it in its right context. This way I’m much more likely to remember it next time.

SRS by itself is far from perfect, but if you use it while thinking independently too, its potential is much greater. I’m sure lots of you know the feeling that you have learned a word, and you are sure of it, but you just can’t say it. This may simply be because it’s been too long since you reviewed that word, and using SRS a few minutes a day will make sure that all words you use in the system will never be neglected if you use it right.

Another thing to take into account for learning words efficiently and avoiding forgetting them is to avoiding learning the vocabulary only one way: foreign language to native language, focusing on recognition rather than production. This focus means a lot of people understand languages but are at a loss when the time comes to speak them. In this case, it’s important that you see words appear in SRS for translation to the foreign language too.

When used on a computer, you can acquire single-word vocabulary very quickly (it works easily with the keyboard 1,2,3,4 & space keys for quicker navigation than with the mouse) if you set aside 30 minutes a day to review words. And in its mobile form you can take advantage of time that you would otherwise waste, to improve your vocabulary!

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I interviewed the Anki developer Damien as part of the audio for the Language Hacking Guide, to understand SRS better, and he is going to continue to develop different versions of this open-source software for people to enjoy. Give it a try!

If you have experience with Anki or other applications that apply SRS let us know! Has it helped, or do you prefer other systems for vocabulary? People also use it for learning scripts such as Kanji, and you can add audio and pictures if you feel that would help!

Wish me luck for Monday! I’ll have an extra bonus for the first people to get a copy of the Guide. I’ve been working for about 6 weeks full time total to produce this and share it with the world! You can see that I haven’t been posting regularly to the blog because of that, so hopefully that will change soon! I’m looking forward to releasing it into the wild
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Die Mauer muß weg!!

Just one week into my latest crazy mission and I am happy to report that I have only been speaking German with Germans since I got here. Apart from with my landlord (who is American) and lunch with a Canadian friend, I have used no English at all outside of the house for the entire week. I have also spent the entire day constantly conversing with friends in German for half of the week.

And yet, let me assure you, that my level of German is still quite miserable and I am very limited in what I can say. I do feel the slight advantage from my school education, but to be totally frank my ability to converse has relied way more on language hacks as I’ll describe them in this post, than an unimpressive C that I got in German 11 years ago.

My first week in Prague to learn Czech was similar, and I will do the same for future immersion. Not having a background in the language is no excuse to not try to jump in as soon as possible. Not speaking English has been the ‘secret’ to my success in rapid language learning, but of course there is more to it than that. Hopefully the transparency in this post of my first week will show people that there is no magic at play here.

[Parts of this post are copied from my language log on the how-to-learn-any-language forum]

Day one: Preparation

I had hoped to have prepared a little in advance this time, by simply reviewing my old notes on German to refresh my memory in the week or two leading up to my flight, but spending time with family took precedence! This meant that my mission really began the day that I was flying out.

I was quite restricted in terms of weight of what I could bring, as I travel with basically my entire ‘house’ on the flight over. (How I managed to bring over 40kg with me on a cheap no-frills flight and not pay surcharges will be the subject of my next video). This meant that I couldn’t take many books with me.

So I did the following to make sure that I had study material with me for the bus to the airport and for any wasted time on the flight, and in general over the next weeks:

• I found several PDFs online of German grammar rules for the purposes of refreshing my memory. I’ve imported these PDFs to my iPhone for studying.
• I had taken several books out of my town’s library to study, but never got around to them. However, they came with a bunch of CDs, so I ripped the audio off them and put them on my MP3 player to listen to on the bus/flight.
• One of the few books I did take with me was a pocket categorised vocabulary book. Any large bookstore has one of these – I’ve been taking advantage of wasted time and studying this on the metro/buses in Berlin – learning vocabulary in relevant categories has been a great help for me, and I always make sure to get a book small enough to put in my pocket. This time I won’t be using a phrasebook since I can indeed construct sentences, but I need the words to go in them, so I’ll be trying various approaches to learning vocabulary that are new to me until I find the bests ones for my purposes.

On my first day all I had to do was get a U-Bahn ticket from the airport and check into the youth hostel. There are very few possible conversations that can come from these situations and a phrasebook usually helps me with them. In this case the vocabulary I had studied on the flight over did the trick.

Day two: How CONTEXT helped me

I started very easy, just with Guten Morgen and Danke over breakfast at the hostel, and then went out to run some important errands that are necessary when moving to a new country.

First thing was to get an apartment. I had spent weeks researching prices and getting in touch with potential landlords (see this post for info on how I usually find them) and had arranged several meetings for my first morning. The first place I saw was perfect and a great price so I took it immediately, as I didn’t want the next guy to take it from me, and I cancelled the other meetings. I knew the second that I walked in that it would be home! I had a very careful look at the place and asked the right questions to make sure there were no unwanted surprises. This was the only thing I did all day in English, since the landlord is American (and a really cool guy!)

Then I went to the Tourist Information for maps and to ask about prices for monthly public transport tickets. This was my first proper German conversation in Berlin.

I was worried that I would have to fall back to English, especially when asking at the Tourist Information where they would of course speak it, but he was quite patient with my umming and struggles to say something. Just before the conversation, I spent several minutes looking up a few words in preparation and wasn’t caught out by his responses since I had listened to 6 CDs worth of audio in the last 24 hours.

I thought that Germans would immediately change the conversation to English since I had been warned of this, but seeing that I am genuinely trying has kept everyone speaking German with me so far. I always have a smile and show that I’m not struggling but that I’m enjoying speaking in German (even though it’s limited) and that has been working well so far. [Edit: as was pointed out in a comment, a lot of beginner learners tend to look "like they're having bamboo jammed under their fingernails" when they try to speak. Of course people are going to want to save you from that torment because they are nice. If you look like you are having fun, you'll encourage the other person to want to help you!]

I’m sure I’ll meet some people as stubborn to practise a foreign language as me eventually, but I don’t see English being forced on me as much of an issue over the next 3 months to be honest. I may go into more details on the body language and queues I use to ‘charm’ them into sticking to their language with me another time.

Next was much more complicated; buying a SIM card. This isn’t a simple case of asking for one, paying, and leaving, because I wanted to know exactly how much everything costs, especially 3G Internet access (so I can check work e-mails when not at home). I first spent 10 minutes in the Vodafone shop to get a prepaid card, but after going through the whole official process, the clerk realised that I can’t even use full Internet on my iPhone so we cancelled it. We had tried a few things, and I was having difficulty in understanding his instructions, but CONTEXT helped me where not knowing actual vocabulary failed.

For example he was describing some type of list to go through and made it to “…Netzwerk, Mobiles Datennetzwerk” and I recognised these (from the similarity to English) to “Network, Cellular Data Network” and knew from familiarity that to get to these on my iPhone I had to press “Settings, General” first. He would have said those two words but not understanding them didn’t stop me from performing what he was requesting. Even if you just understand 30% of the information, you can still get 100% of the content by learning to efficiently extrapolate.

Next I went to T-mobile store and asked straight away about the iPhone Internet options. It seems none of them have a flat rate (great news: the English “Flat rate” is how they say it in German! I picked this up from the first guy) for pre-paid and charge per kB, which I didn’t like at all.

Finally in the O2 store I saw that a SIM card contract is the best way to go. He assured me that I can cancel it a month before I leave and receive an invoice by mail that I can pay in person, so I don’t actually need a German bank account as I had thought. Once again, lots of words I didn’t understand here, but the context made so many things obvious. At one point I did give up and asked him to say something in English, but he said he didn’t speak any! So he explained around until I understood, so the conversation did stay in German!

I made sure to have a pleasant smile and to apologise for my level of German, with anyone I talked to more than briefly and they all complimented me and gave me great encouragement. I was totally expecting to have to battle to speak German, but this has been far from the case. Cities are generally more of a challenge because more people will speak English, but I prefer them and I act differently to most learners that they may be used to meeting. This successful first day trying had given me great confidence; a good first day is hugely important to keep up the momentum!!

Despite that, it also showed me LOTS that I need to work on, so for my next days I stayed indoors to study:

Day 3&4: study triage

Since some German friends were going to be visiting me, I needed to be ready for them and greatly improve my conversation potential. Some people seem to think that I don’t do any studying or avoid input entirely, but I do not just ‘talk my way to fluency’. I obviously need to learn words or I can’t say what I want.

But learning all the words of a language is too daunting a task and is completely unnecessary for my purposes right now. I have accepted that I will not pass off as a German at any stage over the next weeks, so I’m not worried about speaking perfectly. There are particular things I generally need to say, so I applied a study triage to make sure I had them. In the same way as a hospital has a triage for the sickest patients being seen to first, I have a triage of priorities for what I need to study.

There is quite a lot of grammar that will genuinely NOT help me speak more confidently and more “fluently” (in terms of lacking pauses, not actual level of a language) right now. For example, in German the adjective can have a pretty decent number of endings depending on whether the preceding word was an indefinite article, a definite article or no article and of course on whether the next word is masculine, feminine or neuter and then on top of that whether the case involved is nominative, accusative, dative or genitive. That is a lot of details and calculations to perform for me right now. Of course, I need to know all of these endings if I want to speak German correctly.

But this week, perfection was not the goal so I have NO NEED to know these endings. I will always just add an -e since that seems to be the one that comes up the most. These tables of different possibilities are NOT going to help me right now. The point is communication and a German will know exactly what I mean if I say große when in fact I technically should have said großes.

So I have skipped such points and focused on grammar that will genuinely make a difference in me understanding something or being able to say something clearly. In a couple of weeks, once I have a good flow of the language then I will be ironing out these finer points so that I am actually speaking it correctly.

This also applies to vocabulary of course – whenever I come to a word that I don’t particularly think will kill me if I don’t know it (e.g. shoelace) then I simply skip it. Once again, I can come back to these later when I have a base vocabulary of words that I genuinely do use myself regularly. Something that is especially useful in a language like German is studying word prefixes and suffixes, as this can give you a vast understanding of many words for very little initial work. I’ll go into more details on this another time.

Also note that even though I’m at home, any radio and TV I listen to is in German, and I’ll be looking to read German newspapers regularly. I have also changed the language of my entire computer interface.

Day 5 on: speaking German all day long

I had invited several German friends to visit me for my first week; they have come from other parts of Germany and are taking advantage of the Easter break – we have been hanging out all day long and speaking just in German the entire time. It didn’t feel like a stressful language test; I was genuinely just hanging out, and checking out the city etc.

So, how do I do it? My level of German is still quite unimpressive. I have been able to respond to comments on this site and even write brief e-mails in German, however sitting in a comfy chair with a tab open on dict.cc and being able to look up grammar rules etc. and taking several minutes just for a few sentences, is quite useful but is not really speaking a language as I would see it. You don’t have such comforts in the pressure of a spontaneous conversation.

What I do is make sure that the other person is very motivated to help me. I use Couchsurfing for this purpose to maintain my already learned languages. I consider my apartment a crucial aspect of “language hacking”. So I will not just be working on my German; I will (as always) be maintaining my other languages by inviting natives to stay with me, although my priority will be for German for the next months. If I was focused 100% just on German, then sharing with Berliner flatmates would have been way more practical, but my home is also where I work and that complicates matters a bit.

This means that free accommodation is one “carrot” I can dangle in the air to convince someone to help me. After that it gets more complicated to motivate someone to listen to you in the early stages, but this week I am only inviting good friends of mine who are familiar with my “missions” and are genuinely happy to be a part of it. They are also curious about learning languages so I’ve been happy to share my best tips with them… in German.

And this is a crucial thing I find scares people from attempting to speak in early stages: you have nothing “interesting” to say. I can assure you that I don’t spend my first weeks talking about the weather in any language. I talk about my language learning mission and give tips for those curious on how I do it, I share travel tips, explain how my location independent job works etc. And then of course, I listen to them talk and try to join in on that, or at least use conversational connectors to keep the conversation going. Everyone loves a good listener! I generally don’t talk about the weather in any language, but I do talk about these other things, so this is precisely where my vocabulary learning is focused on.

All of this can be genuinely interesting for some people (not all obviously). This means that they will “put up with” my constant stumbles, short and snappy sentences and repetition of basic words like “machen” (do/make) when I don’t know the actual word (and will ask it).

I said it before and I’ll say it again, context is the KEY. If I don’t know the word for “translate” for example, but I say that I “make a document in English from French”, I have entirely gotten my point across.

As always, this is not a long term solution. The visits end this week and I’ll have to be more social and make friends here in Berlin, and they won’t know how I think. But this week will have given me the essential confidence and momentum to speak, and I’ll have learned lots of key words that I tend to naturally use in conversations from my friends.

I don’t always do this; I generally don’t have this option of good friends staying with me for my first week (I didn’t have any Czech friends on arrival in Prague), and you may have to think of something else that would be interesting for someone to hear from you (how to cook, how to play chess etc.) as well as trying to be a good listener, but it’s important to see what opportunities you have and to take them.

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Hopefully this detailed account of my first week will give you ideas of how language hacking can help you to actually speak even when your level of a language is low. Do you think you could try these suggestions? If you have any other ideas of things to do, make sure to mention them in the comments

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