Introduction I would like to answer a question that I get asked often – how do I learn my languages? Well, I’ve used different methods for all my languages, making improvements along the way. What I’m going to describe here is what I would recommend based on all my language learning experience, and not necessarily the exact way I learned any specific language. I’m keeping this general and simple here, so that it flows smoothly. I will give further explanations, exceptions and personal experiences in future posts. I am a big believer in balanced language learning, or learning using all the basic language skills. I didn’t used to be. I’ve studied for long periods of time and learned the hard way that balance is more efficient for me. Why? Because working with all basic skills at the same time produces a combined learning effect which is greater than the sum of their individual effects. This is called synergy, so that’s what I’ve named this method. Note: This method is designed for adult learners who'd like to reach an advanced level (C1/C2) in their target language. For other learners, this information might be helpful, but it's not designed with them in mind. Pre-learning research. I’m not talking about researching if you really want to learn a given language, what language you want to learn, finding out if you are motivated enough to learn it, etc. For me, those things are solidly predetermined, but I may post about them in the future. My pre-learning research is to figure out what resources I’m going to use to follow the method below. Also, there are aspects some languages that will have to be handled outside of the framework below, so research can help me discover these and figure out a plan of action to learn them. I recommend reading about the language in forums like this one, and asking lots of questions about resources. Wikipedia is also a great source of information. When you finally have some specific resources in mind, I recommend reading descriptions and reviews on sites like Amazon before buying. Step 1 – Isolated pronunciation and orthography Goals: Be able to repeat isolated words correctly after hearing them. Be able to read isolated words out loud with correct pronunciation. Expansion: The first thing you need to be able to do is pronounce all the different sounds made in a language. When you do this it will be most efficient to link these sounds to something visual, so the most efficient thing to do is learn orthography, the language’s writing system, at the same time. Note - this is a pretty short step, along the order of 10-20 hours. The goal isn’t comprehension or comfortably reading texts; those things come later. How to do it: Find some material that teaches pronunciation, for example, the first chapter of a textbook or an online resource. There must be audio. You need to work with audio from the beginning – never read first and utter before listening; check the audio frequently. Practice listening to and repeating the sounds, then listening to the sounds and writing the text. After you get the hang of it, practice reading and pronouncing the text, and comparing your pronunciation to the audio.. Memorize the alphabet and the names of the letters. When you are reading and pronouncing words correctly, move on to the next step. Step 2 – Sentence level pronunciation, vocabulary and listening Goals: Be able to repeat simple sentences correctly after hearing them. Be able to read those sentences out loud with correct pronunciation. Memorize the vocabulary in those sentences. Be able to understand simple listening material. Expansion: The best time to learn good pronunciation is in the beginning. Step 1 was about word level pronunciation. I added in orthography because of synergy. Step 2 is about sentence level pronunciation. I’m adding reading, vocabulary and listening because of synergy. The listening I’m referring to in the title of this step is separate or in addition to the listening you will need to do before you repeat your simple sentences. Listening is perhaps the most difficult skill to develop, and needs to be started in the beginning. The synergy due to listening is very important. If you don’t have a good grounding in listening, you will have great difficulty when beginning to converse, for example. How to do it: You need to find some basic material that you can shadow, parrot or repeat. It’s best if it’s designed to be an audio program, but you’ll need to have a transcript for it too. I strongly recommend Pimsleur for this step, although you will need to find a transcript somewhere or create your own because Pimsleur doesn’t publish them. Another option for this is Assimil. After doing an audio lesson, memorize the sentences and new vocabulary words from L1 to L2 and L2 to L1, reading them out loud with correct pronunciation. I recommend using an SRS for this. When you are doing the audio lessons, be sure you pronounce every aspect of the sentence prosody, intonation, rhythm, stress, etc as the native speaker does. For listening, it’s nice to start with very simple podcasts in L2. In the very beginning you will know nothing and understand nothing, so podcasts that have some explanations in L1 might be necessary. Another option is to watch video with subtitles in L1, turning them off and on to test your understanding. Try to move onto simple 100% L2 podcasts and such as soon as you feel you are understanding them fairly well. Try to listen to materials at i+1. Continue to practice a little writing. For example, writing out known sentences. If you want to kill two birds with one stone, create a Pimsleur transcript by writing it out. Ten minutes a day is enough writing at this point. Step 3 –Grammar, reading, writing, and conversation Goals: Make conversation, reading and writing ongoing components of your language learning plan. Complete a grammar course. Continue listening and vocabulary study. Expansion: This step is complete when you have finished your grammar studies. You are firing on all pistons now, and that means there is a lot to do at the same time. Many will have time management issues. Practice as many skills as you can to maximize the benefits of synergy. How to do it: You can actually start conversation when you are about half way through your Pimsleur course (but you should definitely continue and complete the course), or when you feel your sentence pronunciation is ok, you can understand simple audio and you have a few hundred words memorized. Conversation is often the most prized goal of the learner, so start it early and practice it often. I recommend 30 minutes a day. Try to write down all the new words you hear, and all the words you couldn’t think of, and memorize them later. Skype is a great tool for beginning conversation. I like to have Google Translate up beside my skype window to look up the occasional word and keep the conversation flowing. Use tips in How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately. Try to use your new vocabulary and grammar often. Start reading after completing Pimsleur. Read out loud. Read material that’s i+1, which has audio, if possible. I recommend 15 minutes to start with. Look up unknown words with a mouse-over dictionary if possible. LingQ is a great tool for this stage of your reading. There are lots of articles of all levels, with recordings and a mouse over dictionary. Increase sessions to 30+ minutes, several times a week. Put unknown words into your SRS if you have time. Start writing after completing Pimsleur. I recommend 15 minutes to start with. A mixture of handwriting and typing is recommended. Here is my method for handwriting without any help from dictionaries, etc. Just let it flow. If you absolutely must use a word you don’t remember or don’t know, transliterate the L1 word into L2 for the time being to let you smoothly continue your task. When you are finished, read it out loud, and use a dictionary and red pen to correct spelling errors, etc. Get a native speaker to check it. Lang-8 is a great resource for getting natives to correct your writings. Read the final draft out loud. Increase sessions to 30+ minutes, several times a week. Put unknown words into your SRS. Try to use your new vocabulary and grammar often. Start grammar after completing Pimsleur. At this point, I recommend Michel Thomas if available. It’s a great grammar primer which teaches a lot of grammar in a short amount of time and will help you a great deal with your beginning conversation. A word of caution though – don’t copy the pronunciation of non-native speakers, and don’t take pronunciation tips from Michel Thomas either. I mention this because I fell into this trap and want to prevent others from doing the same. After Michel Thomas, find a good comprehensive text or grammar and work your way through it, doing all the exercises. Put unknown words into your SRS if you have time. Make an effort to use your new grammar as soon as you learn it in your writing and conversation. Continue listening. In addition to listening to the audio for the things you read every day, I recommend watching video. Use subtitles to make it more comprehensible if necessary, preferable in L2. You should be listening a total of 30+ min/day. Put unknown words into your SRS if you have time. Continue vocabulary study. At this stage, there will be too much vocabulary for you to memorize all of it in an SRS. You should limit your SRS sessions to a max of 1 hour per day, or 25% or your total study time, whichever is less. You will need to decide which words to put in. Highest priority will be words from your conversation. Next are words from your writing. Next are everything else. Leave out low usage words and words that seem hard to memorize. Delete old words from your SRS if your sessions are too long. Don’t memorize words in isolation if it you feel you are getting no benefit from it. Make an effort to use your new vocabulary in your writing and conversation. Step 4 – Take reading, writing, listening and conversation to C1/C2 Goals: Improve your reading, writing, listening and conversation until you reach your final goals in the language – the C1/C2 level. Expansion: You should have already finished your grammar studies. Now it’s time to discard the isolated vocabulary study and focus 100% of your time on the 4 basic skills. This is a long step, but should be pretty enjoyable because you are really using the language. How to do it: Study the 4 basic skills concurrently. Don’t drop a skill to give you more time for another. This is the fundamental theory behind synergy – the whole is more than the sum of the parts. For example, even if you don’t care about being able to write, having a writing component will allow you to reach your goals in conversation faster than not having one. Reading – continue reading until you are able to understand newspapers, novels, signs, menus, etc, well. Writing – continue writing until you can produce texts about anything you need to with correct grammar and at a good speed. Listening – continue listening until you can understand movies, radio, people talking to each other, TV, etc, well. Conversation – continue conversing until you can talk about anything you need to with correct grammar, quickly and fluidly. Note – it’s ok to use tools like dictionaries, lingQ, subtitles, etc. in your learning process, but the levels described above are without the help of such tools. You will need to wean yourself off such tools at some point before reaching your final goal.
You really seem to believe in the synergy concept. Was it something you read or just what you feel was missing in your studies?
I see it in many fields, and have suspected it's pretty important in language learning for some time. Only recently did I start to believe it's so important that I need to make some changes to my learning plan. The first time I saw the word was in physics, but I don't remember the context. Lots of methods these days suggest building up one or more skills, in a sort of lopsided way. For example, L-R and Benny's speak from day one. Synergy is about balance.
I see. I've been thinking about it and I think I'm going to go in the opposite direction in studying Russian. I think it makes the most logical sense for me especially since I don't have a pressing need to speak. I’m not going to Russia anytime soon. Maybe I'm wrong but I think my speaking will improve really rapidly once I start and I can get to a higher level quicker overall. It will be fun to see how it works since it will be the opposite of how I learned Thai where I tried to talk from the beginning. I think the balanced plan makes a lot more sense for you're since you're using the language and going to the country.
I see. Regardless of how logical other methods may seem, I believe that a balanced plan will get one to C1 faster than a lopsided one, based on my experience and what I've read. Short term goals are different though. Benny's speak from day one is probably pretty good for creating videos of himself conversing after 3 months, for example.
I'm looking at it as a very long term plan though. A staggered approach that will hopefully get me to c1+ in the 4 skills as fast as possible.
The only staggering that I do in Synergy is force massive pronunciation work up front. Then I delay "normal conversation" by a few weeks due to lack of vocab. Aside from that, it's pretty balanced. I think conversation early on helps with the other skills. When I first started learning languages, I mainly did grammar studies, word memorization, and conversation. Terrible method. Then I added reading and listening. Now I'm experimenting with adding writing. It just keeps getting better.
Yeah, that makes sense, pronunciation before speaking. I can see how reading and writing can help speaking, but not the other way around. How do you think speaking helps the other skills?
It helps with listening, obviously. Pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar. Vocabulary and grammar improve reading and writing. All skills help all other skills.
I agree with the synergy principle overall, but I think some skills have a minimal effect on others. Reading a lot can give you a broader vocabulary and help internalize grammar which helps with speaking but I don't think speaking has much effect on reading, for example. In fact, I don't think any other skill affects reading very much. If you know the words and understand the grammar then you can read, regardless of your speaking, listening and writing levels.
All skills help all skills. Regarding the degree one skill helps the other, I don't know, although personal experience and what I've read makes me believe they are all significant and shouldn't be ignored or delayed if possible. How do other skills help reading? When you listening, speak and write you are practicing grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, which helps reading. I think it's possible to read without practicing the other skills, but it's much less efficient or beneficial toward learning a language.
I guess it depends on the learner's goals and definition of learning a language. Like you, I want to be able to use all 4 skills in my language so of course it's not beneficial to us to only read. However, if someone was only interested in learning a language to read literature then I don't think there would be a synergistic effect at all to learning the other skills. There might be some tiny improvement to reading through practicing the other 3 skills but it would be horribly inefficient compared to just reading and studying grammar and vocabulary. Perhaps I'm wrong, but i see it like this: some skills directly affect each other, some barely do, but taken together they all provide some extra benefit. In the diagram below, I think you could draw arrows connecting certain skills to certain other ones. Some would be 2 way arrows (mutual benefit), some would be one way (reading -> speaking, but not the opposite). Some would be thicker (representing a stronger benefit) some would be thinner. Taken separately, I don't see how each skill can affect each skill equally. READING WRITING SPEAKING LISTENING Like you, my main goal with a language is conversation. Speaking and listening are crucial, reading is next in importance for learning vocabulary and grammar, and writing is, imo, the least important. In Thai I reached a conversational level of about B2 without ever doing any writing and I could have reached C1 or C2 by continuing that plan if I hadn't become satisfied with my current level. I think that writing would have had some benefit and I will add it to my Russian studies, but it would have been much, much more difficult to get to that conversational level with speaking, listening, and writing but no reading.
I wasn't really thinking about people who only want to read, so I'm glad you brought it up. What you have written is logical, and it's what I would have believed at an earlier stage of my language learning. But what seems logical to me I find sometimes doesn't apply to language learning. For example, several impressive polyglots I've read about and listened to, the most famous of which is probably Alexander Arguelles, who are primarily if not exclusively interested in reading, learn by using all skills. So based on that and my gut feeling, I have to disagree. I'll agree that the benefits one gets from synergy are not as great for someone only interested in reading as someone interested in all skills. I won't agree that it's more efficient to ignore all other skills if you are only interested in reading. I didn't say that they effect each other equally. Here's what I said:
That surely depends if your goal is "to read" or "to read well". Language is riddled with redundancy, and if you're not forced to pay attention to everything, you'll probably relax on certain things. For example, prepositions. When I was teaching in the Basque Country, I had one student who read naturally and fluidly... but got all his prepositions wrong. He didn't need to consciously read the prepositions, because he naturally understood the sentence. His brain identified the short words on the page as prepositions, then parachuted in whichever preposition he thought was correct. These were usually wrong. I noticed a similar thing while doing a bit of German on DuoLingo today. In the German->English translation questions, I really wasn't paying any real attention to whether it was der, die or das -- it was just "definite article". Similarly I wasn't paying any attention to which indefinite article went with which noun. I didn't need to to complete the task at hand. Input will always be forgiving. It's really only when we engage in output that most of us are able to force our brains to look at the language in detail. If you only ever read, you won't develop an internal model that is anything like a native one, so you won't be appreciating the book like a native. If you're interested in reading technical materials, that might be enough, but if you want to read literature, it's not.
If you don't believe me, I got a great example today, with one of my more advanced students. We were working on reported speech, and the task was to transform a sentence like this into the reported form. "What do you want?" he asked the teachers. My student changed it to: He asked the teacher what she wanted. Notice how he didn't perceive the S. Why? It's written right there! He filtered the input based on his internal model, and we read by "hearing" what we see. As he has difficulty pronouncing the -s suffix (like most Italians and Spanish people), his brain doesn't make a distinction between "teacher" and "teachers" in listening, and there was no other clue as to the number in the sentence.
Good example. I wonder why he assumed the teacher was female. I think most of my teachers were male until I started learning languages as an adult.
super late to the conversation, but this is really awesome stuff. do you all feel that this system is appropriate for learning multiple languages at once? or is that ill-advised altogether?
This "method" is the compilation of my conclusions based on the study of 8 languages over many years. It's designed for learning one language from scratch to a high level (C1/C2). For information on how I integrate multiple languages into this, you can read the rest of the threads in this sub-forum. Probably the most pertinent thread for your question is the one on Maintaining Languages. In summary, for people who want to learn many languages to a high level, I feel that it's most efficient to learn a language all the way to C1/C2 before starting another. That way there is little if any maintenance required, and all your study time can be used for your new language.