Eu achei o seu site muito interessante, apesar da leitura bem superficial que eu fiz. Pude ver que a aquisição da fluência depende principalmente da imersão a qual você se submete, no caso as viagens para os países em que você aprende o idioma novo. É isso?
O método só funciona em imersão dentro do país da língua alvo?
Ou você já testou seu método fora do país ao qual você está aprendendo idioma alvo?
(Desculpe. Se a pergunta já foi respondida antes.)

Bruno.

If you must know I don't actually like the “we are all smart handsome ……. ” type of talk that probably comes from an American influence, Chinese pod had this problem once, everybody smelling of Rainbows etc. It seems that a lot of ego massaging is required. Some of his posts seem to carry a fair amount of arrogance (and I mean arrogance, not confidence). Best seen in one of his videos actually (the one where he has Cantonese cartoons playing in the background). His friend who is taking the video tells him of a guy he met who has studied Japanese at university has great Japanese and he visibly riles at this because in his opinion no-one who studies academically gets to his level (you can see how upset he is quite clearly but his friend doesn't back down). This is arrogant of course because just because someone studies academically (how ever bad that is) doesn't meant they can't master a language (you don't know what else they are doing).

The AJAT blog has a whole bunch of highly specific language related posts I would highly recommend it anybody.

It is easy to be critical and amongst the unwashed masses of language bloggers there is a lot of good stuff and a lot of bad, I wouldn't openly criticise most of though although I may debate points aggressively. I think it is fair to criticise brands however so I don't mind saying that Khaz can seem arrogant, or point out where I think it occurs, I am not aware of ascribing “life hacky nonsense” to him though but it is possible after a bottle of wine on a bad evening I have done that and forgotten about it, If you have a link where I have let me know.

Since you asked I had an extremely enjoyable chat with Khatz. We share so many views about language learning, and even though we disagree on a couple of things, as we were talking we just accepted that as different approaches with neither being superior.

After I interviewed him for the guide, I stayed on the line for almost an hour just generally chatting. He is an awesome guy and represents the human-aspect I previously felt was ignored and does it in even more detail than I have and over a longer period of time.

I'm not surprised that you don't like the style of some of his posts as that would be along the same lines of the kind of “life hacky nonsense” I promote myself. Odd isn't it, that two different successful language learners believe these messages are crucial to share with people…?

He is in the input camp and I would never criticise his 16 months as being in any way inferior to mine since he certainly got way beyond my definition of fluency and he is much more devoted than I am (this Saturday night in Berlin for example, I spoke as much French and Spanish as I did German, so I'm not all-German-all-the-time – this detracts from my mission, but is part of my style of living). He reached a level of Japanese accepted professionally and that's not something I have ever been interested in myself other than C2 exams, which are just two days of examinations, not living that way all the time. Katz's devotion is impressive.

You are right about the application of the 80:20 rule. However, I think that if I kept the same momentum and devotion that I do for 3 months, up for a longer time I would achieve something comparable, but I don't know if I could focus on one language for that amount of time. I probably could, but I am currently not so interested – 3 months fits my lifestyle, and I know it wouldn't for most people.

Although your conclusion is rather vague. “Real people” are lazy and don't apply efficient methods to a lot of what they do. I think such questions about “what would happen if everyone in the world…” are not so helpful. I focus on my own personal struggle and share my thoughts with others. If everyone in the world doing something would make what I do irrelevant, then I'll do something else, or do what they do if it works. I don't think the readership of my or Tim Ferriss' blog is going to jump to 7 billion overnight, so don't worry, the world as you know it won't come to an end

Not sure that the human aspect can be considered universally ignored either there is plenty of material around, some of it very good, it brings to mind a really excellent video that circulated amongst a lot of language learners a couple a years ago, I will try to dig up the link I think it was on Youtube, it directly addressed the communication issue. It was one of those videos that basically says it all in a way that people can get.

For input methods most people talk as as well, I wonder how you would view Kazamoto (I might have spelled that wrong) the AJAT guy, I don't like the style of some of his posts but regardless, a lot of what he writes is spot on imho and I consider him very much in the input camp (in that he certainly used vastly more input than output). He may have taken 16 months or so to master Japanese (what a slacker eh ) but to be fair he was aiming at a standard considerably higher than you describe in your three month definition of fluency. I think you are interviewing him? so that should be interesting.

We have to be careful here, some people do take years to get no-where but others choose to take years to get to a very high standard (which is very very different). The infamous 80:20 rule may bite here, you can get so far in a few months but the next 10% will take longer by far. The 80:20 rule is often over applied but people like Tim Ferris use it to justify learning lots of languages to a reasonable standard rather than one or two to a very high standard (and they can't have it both ways). When I read that (I am pretty sure it was Tim Ferris and a few others but I may be wrong I have read so much over the past year) I wondered what would have happened if everyone in the world had taken that approach to everything they do, luckily real people rarely work like that.

I am Nikolai from Heidelberg, Germany.
I got to know your page through ScottHYoungs blog and immediately became a big fan
In a comment on one of Scotts articles you mentioned, that you've aquired the habit of getting up at 6.30 am daily, napping for 20mins and going to bed around 12-1am. I think this is great! And since time is a very important aspect in learning languages (in your freetime) I would be glad if you could write a bigger post with a more detailed explanation about how to have more time / how to use your time better – e.g. for learning langueages. Are you going to write about this here or in your upcoming guide?

Have a good time!
Niko

P.S. Will be signing up to the mailing list and will definitely be buying a copy of your guide – it sounds like you will be covering some really important things that seem to apply to quite a few people (i.e. being an introvert…) and it's good if it will help you out too