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Reddit mentions of Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It

Sentiment score: 23
Reddit mentions: 33

We found 33 Reddit mentions of Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It. Here are the top ones.

Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It
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Found 33 comments on Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It:

u/John6507 · 16 pointsr/argentina

OP, I would recommend the following assuming he will have access to a computer and the Internet and is somewhat comfortable using those things:

  1. Duolingo is a good starting point. It is free and easy to use and will provide some early confidence.

  2. Have him write down the reasons he wants to learn English and what would be the common settings for its use. This is important for motivation purposes to remind him down the line but it also lets you adjust his training to vocabulary in those settings.

  3. Have him buy a small journal which he can take with him where he can write down all his thoughts during the day. For example, what words and phrases he wants to know in English or a new word he learned that he wants to add to his vocabulary lists. This is also a place where he can put together common scripts for the scenarios he wants to be able to converse in. For example, checking in at a hotel, going to a restaurant, talking to a client about business, etc.

  4. Early on, I suggest avoid focusing on grammar. He can always learn grammar later and it is IMO the most tedious form. You want to get him some early wins in his language learning so he will be motivated to keep going. If you must talk about grammar, just focus on the present tense and the very basics early on.

  5. Instead, focus his attention on vocabulary building that will require flash cards and spaced repetition. There are a number of different ways you can do this. One way is to use a tool like memrise but another is to simply find a list of the most common words used and the ones he wants to learn and put those into an anki deck. If he is old school, and wants to physically write flash cards that is fine too but you will want to give him some information on how to use spaced repitition with physical flash cards. For making flash cards, I would look at books like Fluent Forever (https://www.amazon.com/Fluent-Forever-Learn-Language-Forget/dp/0385348118/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517635406&sr=8-1&keywords=fluent+forever) for advice on how to make flash cards. But basically they should be created by adding in pronounciation, sound files, pictures and word phrases to trigger your memory.

  6. He needs to start reading in English. I like dual language books where they have the English on one side of the page and Spanish on the other. These are great because you can take them with you to the barbershop, on the train, flights, etc. and doesn't require you to have to look anything up on a computer as all the words are translated for you. I like the Stories from... books. They are easy to read and have stories about folklore and history from various countries. I have seen ones from Spain, Puerto Rico, Latin America, and Mexico. Also, a few of these have audio files online where you can get access to listen to these stories with audio as well.
    Here, is a link to a couple of them:
    https://www.amazon.com/dp/1260011275/ref=sxbs_sxwds-stvp_1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=3341940462&pd_rd_wg=QhY2X&pf_rd_r=SNZ6KJ9YGJ9B3SS71HE8&pf_rd_s=desktop-sx-bottom-slot&pf_rd_t=301&pd_rd_i=1260011275&pd_rd_w=UvgyL&pf_rd_i=null&pd_rd_r=db451c8e-32db-4684-9246-6602f8168da5&ie=UTF8&qid=1517635806&sr=1
    https://www.amazon.com/Stories-Mexico-Historias-M%C3%A9xico-Premium/dp/1260011046/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1260011046&pd_rd_r=QJRX7JC2P82FPT7PRKE3&pd_rd_w=we8to&pd_rd_wg=V7DKJ&psc=1&refRID=QJRX7JC2P82FPT7PRKE3&dpID=51aR236tnML&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=detail

  7. Once he gets beyond these books, I would have him look at a service like LingQ. This is great for working on reading and listening skills. One challenge I find is it is hard to find content that has the language in audio and written form together and this is a great solution for this problem. I have started using this service a couple of weeks ago and really like it. It basically has written stories on various topics in the foreign language. These stories also have a recording of the story being read so you can listen to the story while reading it. Plus, you can click on any words in the story and it will bring up a defintion and then you can add that word to your vocabulary list. They have a feature where you can then be quizzed on these vocabulary words in close sentence form but I recommend taking the extra step of adding these words to your anki file or other vocabulary flash cards. The only downside is it costs about $10 USD a month for this service. But they do offer a free trial for a week or so and you can get a little cheaper rate by ordering for a year. When you consider the cost of buying a bunch of dual language books and the time spent trying to find them, this is a small cost.

  8. He needs to start talking in English too with a teacher. Until he has an intermediate level, I would not recommend a language exchange partner. Instead, you will need to have sessions with him or get him a teacher on a service like Italki.com or something similar. There may also be some offline options in your area that others can recommend. He may prefer a group/classroom setting initially but as he progresses he should opt for 1 on 1 teaching instead.

  9. After a couple of months, he can start doing some writing as well. One resource that I like for this is lang-8.com. It works where you write a submission in your target language and people will give corrections to you. In return, you correct their submissions. So it is free but costs you a little time.

    Whatever you do, you just want to make sure he is spending some time consistently on the big four: reading, talking, listening and writing. Obviously, a lot of time will also be spent on building his vocabulary as well.
u/Luguaedos · 11 pointsr/languagelearning

If I were you, I would approach this in a practical way. I'm assuming that you are a monoglot English speaker with maybe the equivalent of a US High School introduction to Spanish or French. You number one problem right now is that you don't know how to learn a language on your own. It doesn't matter if it's Spanish or Mandarin, it is most likely that what you will do is what you know: get some books, sit down an hour each day studying like you did in school, maybe use an app and after 6 weeks you'll start to question the process you are making. At first the voice will be small and in the back of your mind. And then one day, you'll come home form a bad day at work or school and you won't feel like studying so you'll skip a day. And your downward spiral to giving up will have started. By your 12th week you might still make token efforts to study, maybe you'll use an app (Duolingo, Memrise) for 15 minutes or reread one of the chapters in the book you bought (a chapter you've already read, so you should review it). At this point you are all but done as a language learner. Plug in your Chrome Cast and fire up Netflix because you aren't making the progress you thought that you would. You'll conclude that learning a language is hard, or Arabic was too hard, or that you are not good at languages, and you'll start binging on Supernatural because if you start now, you might be done with seasons 1 - 9 just in time for season 10 to be released on Netflix.

>A poor craftsman blames the tool for what his hand cannot do.

If you don't want to follow the cycle I described above, you should take some time out to learn how to learn and to understand that there are certain tricks and traps that your mind is going to use in an attempt to get you to put in minimal effort while making you think you are making maximum progress. Before I go on, I want you to understand that there is a reason why the first paragraph seems strangely specific. It was my story with a number of languages (Russian, Welsh, etc). I think the best advice that I can give you is to get Make it Stick and read it before you pick a language. Then buy Fluent Forever and read it. Then pick your language and start studying and remember this: value people over process, process over goals, and goals over material. What I mean is that the course or books that you use are the least important factor in your success and that people with whom you surround yourself are the most important factor. Too many people emphasize finding the "right course". It just doesn't exist. Find some decent material and be done.

  1. Spend more time forming relationships with native speakers of your target language and do this from the beginning. If you feel reluctant to do that or you immediately start making excuses about wanting to learn the basics before you do this, stop beeing a whiny little brat and do it any way. ;-) Look at the people who are the most successful language learners. They all have relationships with people that they pursue through the target language.
  2. Develop a study process and integrate it into your day. For example, do the parts of learning that you like least in the morning so that you won't be too tired or stressed at the end of the day. Make friends and pursue interests in your target language. This way learning is not so subject to your emotions. Always keep in mind that your learning process is far more important to your success than the material that you use. Use techniques like spaced repetition, interleaving, and -most importantly- remember that you have to practice what you learn in a real way. Meaning you need to increase your output. Write summaries of grammatical rules in the target language and get feedback. These things are hard and frustrating but you will get far more out of learning this way (see 3rd link at the bottom of this post).
  3. Set SMART goals and use quizzes and testing to help measure and evaluate your goals. Use services like iTalki to chat with random tutors or exchange partners to put yourself in uncomfortable situations that mimic real world conversations. If you can, and it's OK with the other person, record the sessions and give them to a friend or your primary tutor to help evaluate your progress.
  4. Get some good material to use but don't allow this to take up too much of your time. It's just not as important as many people seem to make it out to be.

    And now for the science so you know I'm not just making this all up:
    Learning Painting Styles: Spacing is Advantageous when it Promotes Discriminative Contrast
    LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE
    Learning Concepts and Categories from Examples: How Learner's Beliefs Match and Mismatch the Empirical Evidence
    HOW STIMULUS SIMILARITY IMPACTS SPACING AND INTERLEAVING EFFECTS IN LONG-TERM MEMORY
    Spacing enhances the learning of natural concepts: an investigation of mechanisms, metacognition, and aging
u/DrunkInMontana · 10 pointsr/Spanish

Alrighty, if you want to learn Spanish, this is the method that I have been using so far... First off, I have to plug this book:

Fluent Forever by Grabiel Wyner - Amazon.com

I have read and tried a lot of different books on learning languages before I finally found this one, which I consider to be the holy grail. Nothing else has stuck before I read this book. The method is basically this:

  1. Using Anki, a spaced-repitition learning (SRS) flashcard program, you start to learn the minimal pairs of your target language (words that differ by one sounds like "cat" and "cut"). This will help you later one when listening and learning words and will help you develop a better accent.

  2. Using Anki, start to learn the most commonly used words in your language by gathering your own images and pronunciations to go along with them. Learn the base forms of verbs, you will learn to conjugate them in the next step. Here is the top 1000 words on a frequency list from Wiktionary and here is the 625 word list provided in the book. I suggest using the alphabetical word list rather than the thematic word list because if you start learning words thematically it can be harder to retain, explained within the book. Grab images from Google Images by typing in your target word after translating with SpanishDict and insert into Anki. Grab audio translations from Forvo.com if available.

  3. Once you have plowed your way through 500-1000 words, you are ready to start learning to conjugate verbs and making sentences. He explains a great method for this in the book using mnemonics for different conjugations and provides a model deck you can install to use with Anki at this website. Also take a look at StudySpanish.com - Grammar Tutorial and start working your way through that at the same time. The reason you learn vocabulary first is so you have words to actually make sentences with, rather than using a smaller limited vocabulary to make the same sentences over and over.
    I suggest focusing on Linguasorb.com - Top 100 Spanish Verbs to start with conjugations that will be most commonly used.

  4. Once you are able to construct basic sentences and have a decent vocabulary, you are ready to start really practicing. Find language partners or tutors on iTalki.com, write some short stories and stuff on Lang-8.com and get them translated by native speakers, practice whenever and wherever you can.

  5. Start to acquire as much exposure to the language as possible. Watch TV Shows, read CNN en Español, listen to radio, watch movies, read books, whatever you can at this point to break through that intermediate fluency level.

    Other useful things:

    Books:

u/tidder-wave · 7 pointsr/languagelearning

>Best book on language learning?

>Are there any books about how languages are learned for adults?

Yeah, plenty. I think /u/gwyner has the best book on language learning, but I'm a bit biased, since:

  • I learned about it from Reddit when he posted about his book here.

  • The techniques he proposed are very similar to the ones that my teachers in school have used in the past to teach me a language successfully.

    >How much do scientists even know about it? Do people know how we learn languages on a technical level? Or is it all unconfirmed hypotheses?

    Linguists do know quite a bit about it. They've applied psychology, neuroscience and a whole bunch of other disciplines to try to understand language learning. The book that I've mentioned above has cited many studies to justify the techniques described in it.
u/robobob9000 · 4 pointsr/languagelearning

Beginner:

  1. Use this with Anki to learn Hangeul/Pronuncation: http://fluent-forever.com/pronunciation-trainers/korean/#.Vn_f1_l96Ul
  2. Do TTMIK Levels 1-3 with this Memrise course: http://www.memrise.com/course/534607/every-ttmik-lesson-levels-1-9/
  3. Learn 1000 high frequency words. Use this book to make a word list: https://www.amazon.com/Korean-Essential-Vocabulary-6000-Foreigners/dp/8955184891/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485063386&sr=8-1&keywords=6000+korean, and then look up example sentences on Naver Translate: http://endic.naver.com/search_example.nhn?sLn=en&query=%EA%B0%80%EB%8B%A4&preQuery=&searchOption=example&forceRedirect=N, and then learn the words in Anki, using the methodology described in this book: https://www.amazon.com/Fluent-Forever-Learn-Language-Forget/dp/0385348118/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485065753&sr=8-1&keywords=fluent+forever
  4. Do TTMIK's Korean Verbs Books: http://mykoreanstore.com/collections/featured-items/products/the-korean-verbs-book
  5. Do KGIU Beginner: https://www.amazon.com/Korean-Grammar-Use-Beginning-Intermediate/dp/8959951986/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485063504&sr=8-1&keywords=korean+grammar+in+use
  6. Use this Youtube channel to start developing fluency: https://www.youtube.com/user/11newcon/videos
  7. Sprinkle in other TTMIK products that you might be interested in. "My Daily Routine In Korean", "Korean In Action", and "Real Life Conversations" are all pretty good options.
  8. Sprinkle in other Youtube channels that you might be interested in. GoBillyKorean: https://www.youtube.com/user/GoBillyKorean/videos, SweetAndTastyTV: https://www.youtube.com/user/sweetandtasty/videos, Margarita: https://www.youtube.com/user/DAenvgiell6/videos, FnE Korean: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3VVK5qeHT1DbzqYlzo64iQ/videos and PinkPong: https://www.youtube.com/user/pinkfongko/videos are all good.

    Intermediate:

  9. Do TTMIK Levels 4-6 (links above)
  10. Learn 2000 high frequency words (total of 3000 words) (links above)
  11. Do Glossika: https://glossika.com/courses/?target=kr
  12. Do TTMIK's "My Weekly Korean Vocabulary" set: http://mykoreanstore.com/collections/e-books/products/48-weeks
  13. Do KGIU Intermediate: https://www.amazon.com/Korean-Grammar-Use-Intermediate/dp/892773078X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1485063504&sr=8-2&keywords=korean+grammar+in+use
  14. Start getting corrections from native speakers. Italki for speaking: https://www.italki.com/home, Lang8 for writing: http://lang-8.com/, and HelloTalk for casual speech: https://www.hellotalk.com/
  15. Sprinkle in other TTMIK products that you might be interested in. "IYAGI Translations", "Situational Dialogs In Korean", "Korean Slang Expressions", and "Everyday Korean Idiomatic Expressions" are all pretty good options.
  16. Sprinkle in other Youtube channels that you might be interested in. SKCouple: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoUDrzyCl1IwU602xdTsM-g, EveSojin: https://www.youtube.com/user/evesojin/videos, DeevaJessica: https://www.youtube.com/user/deevajessica/videos, Yumcast: https://www.youtube.com/user/yumcast11/videos HoneyTV: https://www.youtube.com/user/honeyTV2/videos, HeoSam: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnCeDIkExSpULGqmpj5oafg/videos Sadly there's a lack of male Korean youtubers that use Korean subs.
u/abarron87 · 3 pointsr/learnfrench

It's great you are getting such a great headstart. By the time you reach 4 years you're going to have tried so many things! You should totally come back to this thread and see how much progress you'll have made :D.

---

I started with Duolingo, and loved it. It's what brought me joy when I was first learning a language and had no clue what to do when learning a language! As others have mentioned, it's not enough, and to use other tools.

I would suggest that you stop using Duolingo and find a tool that is more efficient and that teaches you material that is RELEVANT to your life. Duolingo doesn't teach you to speak and that's the one of the 4 skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) that people often put off for a long time.

Next, accept and be prepared for your interest to come and go. You can start with a bundle of energy and intend to do it an hour a day, and 5 hours on weekends. That PROBABLY won't last. Building a habit takes time (of which thankfully you have a lot!), and being consistent is the MOST IMPORTANT THING. So, when your motivation wanes (it's inevitable) in a few weeks, months, whatever, don't stop completely. Reduce it down. Half an hour a day, but keep it every day, for example. Keep it going until it's just something you naturally do. Mix it up too: make sure you're keeping time for speaking practice, and don't keep yourself on apps learning vocab for example.

---

Personally, having taught myself French to C1 level over the last few YEARS, I've tried a lot of techniques (Duolingo, Memrise, Anki, Quizlet, italki, in person language exchanges...), and I would now recommend you follow something like Benny Lewis' Language Hacking method for a good starting point. I'm not an extrovert like him, but I've realised the importance of getting over a fear of speaking ASAP. It teaches you to speak from the start, and only learn the grammar and vocab YOU need, that is relevant to YOUR life. Most importantly, it shows you you can have a conversation with only a few words. Duolingo teaches you a bunch of useless vocab that you're not gonna use for ages or ever. Why put that in your brain?

Look into the book Fluent Forever, for which an app is in the process of being made. It's a wonderful language learning method based on the science of how the memory works. HOWEVER, it might only be right for you in a few months when you've tried a few things as it's for serious learners.

Drops is the latest craze that is fun and colourful like Duolingo and Memrise but allows you to dismiss words you don't want to learn right now. Again, this is great because you only learn what's relevant to you.

Taking classes on italki changed my life. Often cheaper than a 1 on 1 class in person, and you can do it from the comfort of your own home. I've used it for both structured classes and conversation practice. Now I just do it for fun!

Meetup.com to find language exchange meetups in your area.

---

Language Hacking book: https://www.amazon.com/Language-Hacking-French-Conversation-Beginners/dp/1473633095/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=language+hacking+french&qid=1554480276&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Fluent Forever: https://www.amazon.com/Fluent-Forever-Learn-Language-Forget/dp/0385348118/ref=sr_1_1?crid=25PI7CK0RP4UH&keywords=fluent+forever&qid=1554480298&s=gateway&sprefix=fluent+forever%2Caps%2C216&sr=8-1

Fluent Forever Creator's TED Talk which is basically the first chapter of the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBMfg4WkKL8

Here's hyperpolyglot Luca Lampariello's guide to how to learn a language from scratch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yexczOMlTwI

Drops: https://languagedrops.com/

Italki: https://www.italki.com/i/BE6aA6?hl=en_us

---

It probably won't be relevant to you yet but I have a YouTube channel where I talk about the real language that the French use. Once you have a good foundation from your studies my videos could be interesting for you. Plugging myself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm8ZJnHy0zY.

---

Good luck and don't worry if this is a lot. You will try a few things and find some that work for you and some that don't. Good idea to reach out to those more experienced. Don't hesitate to ask me any more questions you have. I love this topic.

u/79CetiB · 3 pointsr/norsk

For language learning methods in general, I recommend you read Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner. I'm following pretty much all that he recommends[] for my Norwegian study, and I've found it to be great so far. I only started about a month ago, however, so take that for what it's worth.

 

[
] His method boils down to:

  1. Learn pronunciation.
  2. Don't translate.
  3. Use spaced repetition systems.

     

    edit: formatting
u/DisgruntledVulpix · 3 pointsr/japanese

A very comprehensive answer! I would only add that the book, Fluent Forever contains additional advice on maximising your use of spaced repetition and using dictionaries, phrase books and textbooks to their maximum potential.

I went through those textbooks at university, but skipped An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese. After Tobira, which we rushed through, we dealt with authentic materials - blog posts, excerpts from books, websites, and so on. Basically, after Tobira you will be very close to the level needed to use Japanese-Japanese dictionaries alongside Japanese-English and you'll really be able to fly on your own.

It's also definitely possible to self-teach, but do try to get a Japanese penpal or Skype partner. There are a ton of websites out there if you look.

u/Smartare · 3 pointsr/Anki

If you wanna learn languages with anki I would recommend reading fluent Forever

Really helped me make my language sudies with anki 100x more efficient. You could also check out his blog if you dont wanna buy the book.

u/zerostyle · 2 pointsr/AskMenOver30

Find a spanish speaking girlfriend.

I'm lazy and haven't made progress, but IMO:

  • Duolingo and flashcards are a horrible way to learn. You need to use full phrases/sentences in context and in conversation. Flashcards are fine for learning some basic nouns, but... no.
  • Find a language exchange meetup in your city
  • Use online language exchange video chat for sites
  • https://www.fluentin3months.com/
  • I've heard this book is good for learning how to learn: Fluent Forever
u/bkkgirl · 2 pointsr/linguistics

For stuff specific to Thai, this page seems to have a lot of stuff. As far as general language learning tips go, I highly recommend Fluent Forever, which is just chock full of great ideas. And here are some of my favourite tips:

1. NEVER use an ambiguous transliteration. It will put a huge damper on your ability to speak the language and engrain bad habits into your mind for months or years to come, even after learning the real script.

Especially for Thai, this point is very important, because all the Thai transliteration systems in use are ambiguous.

2. Use an SRS! This will get words into your head much, much quicker.

3. Focus on pronunciation from the very beginning. It's very important to being able to remember the correct word, and to being able to look up words you hear.

Again, especially with Thai, this is very important, as speakers of English, a non-tonal language, have a lot of trouble understanding tones, which are absolutely critical to Thai pronunciation. If you don't get the tones right, no one will understand you at all, and everything else you learn is totally useless.

4. Get a tutor if you're able. They'll be able to help you work through stuff (especially pronunciation) much faster than if you did it on your own. I'd recommend irl ones over internet based ones, but if you want to go the online route, italki.com has quite a number of tutors available with very low rates, for every language you can think of.

Good luck on your language learning endeavor, and maybe stop by and join us at /r/languagelearning some time!

u/HickLivesMatter · 2 pointsr/croatia

I am currently learning Croatian and I have used several books in the process.

This book is by far the best and most straightforward, "Complete Croatian": https://www.bol.com/nl/p/complete-croatian-teach-yourself/9200000030747470/

You may also want to take a look at "Fluent Forever". I would follow and use all of the strategies in there. The book was created by an engineer who became a multilingual opera singer. Engineers are highly efficient at learning extremely complex subjects, due to their training in solving complex problems: https://www.amazon.com/Fluent-Forever-Learn-Language-Forget/dp/0385348118/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521216233&sr=1-1&keywords=fluent+forever

u/newtourer17 · 2 pointsr/French

Is this the book you are talking about? https://www.amazon.com/Fluent-Forever-Learn-Language-Forget/dp/0385348118

If so, it looks interesting.

u/openg123 · 2 pointsr/LearnJapanese

Lots of great advice in here, but I'll throw in my $0.02 as well

  • The importance of pitch accent / pronunciation. None of my teachers emphasized it but ignoring it gives you gaijin Japanese. I think of it as the equivalent to hearing a FOB speak English (as someone who has many FOB friends :).
  • Use Anki from the beginning. It didn't exist back when I started. Now when I read text books, watch movies or Youtube clips, read articles, talk with someone... ANY vocab, grammar point, etc. that I didn't know already gets made into a card to ensure that I'll always retain it.
  • Read Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner. This book was eye opening and instrumental in informing how I designed and constructed my Anki decks. In fact, all the above points and more are covered in this book.
u/whatplanetisthis · 2 pointsr/grammar

I also recommend a book called Fluent Forever. It teaches you how to use Anki to make grammar flash cards. Good luck in your studies.

u/atomicjohnson · 2 pointsr/languagelearning

I like the methods described in Fluent Forever.

u/beardedchimp · 2 pointsr/northernireland

I've been learning about a year and a half. On Monday I just came back from 5 weeks in China.

I'm actually currently writing software to help people learn Chinese but I have not yet released it. I started writing it in part due to how awful duolingo is for Chinese.

My recommendations are:

  1. Read Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner it's a truly fantastic book that teaches you how humans fundamentally learn before turning towards language learning.

  2. Use spaced repetition be that through anki/pleco/skritter it will help enormously

  3. The Chinese grammar wiki is your friend. It is a better resource for grammar than any and all books I've bought.

  4. Read graded Mandarin books, I personally love Mandarin Companion it's written by the authors of the grammar wiki. Reading books in Chinese is a fantastic way to reinforce the characters and make learning fun. Personally I would recommend Country of the Blind.

  5. Use hellotalk or a similar app to practice speaking Chinese. Alternatively your local university might have a Confucius Institute. They offer cheap lessons (the quality varies) but my local one (I live in Manchester) runs Mandarin Corner, a mix of native Chinese students and those learning Mandarin.

    If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
u/stevozz · 2 pointsr/languagelearning

Check out a book called Fluent Forever. The author goes into detail about various techniques to make the language learning process more efficient.

If you don't want to read the whole book I guess you could just note down the key points at the end of each chapter and then skip to the practical techniques part at the end. However, I found it an easy and informative read and highly recommend it to any beginner or improving language learners.

u/strawberryketchup · 2 pointsr/languagelearning

Here are some things that have been helpful for me while learning new languages:

  • Anki: There a lot behind how it works, but it's a flashcard program/App that uses an algorithm that is very good for retaining new information (I originally read about it while reading Fluent Forever, by Gabriel Wyner.
  • Duolingo: You've probably already heard of this one, it's a quasi-Rosetta Stone (but free).
  • Rosetta Stone: Opinions may differ, but imo I learned and retained more with Rosetta Stone than using Duolingo (there's also Memrise but I haven't used that one much, so I can't offer a good opinion on it). Maybe the pictures or more natural audio, not sure. I used the free trial.
  • Labels: Putting labels on everything around your house. This is good for learning nouns [unfortunately, we can't put labels on verbs :( ]. Different nouns have different genders (female/male/neutral) and it's important to know which one is which gender.
  • Keeping a daily journal/diary in the specific language (Greek, in your case): This is really helpful if you do it carefully and go over what you've written correcting your mistakes or clearing-up doubts. It forces you to use the language and think.
  • Traveling: this is obviously not as accessible as the previous ones, but full immersion is by far the best approach. If you have the time/resources, get on a plane and spend some time in Greece :)

    Edit: Also, this sub's wiki has a bunch of resources.
u/Sirupsen · 1 pointr/learnfrench

The author of the book Fluent Forever found some research that pointed at minimal pairs as an excellent way to train your ear. Minimal pairs are pairs of words that sound similar to an untrained ear, e.g. ces/sais, vos/vo and deux/du in French. You can find the words and their correct pronunciation yourself and create an immediate feedback system to learn to distinguish the sounds, or you can buy the English->French pronunciation trainers the author created for Anki (spaced repetition/flash card software). (I'm not affiliated in any way)

u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/learnspanish

Start here. I wish I would have read it...

u/Eric_Wulff · 1 pointr/languagelearning

>And how on earth do you think that saves you time?

It would save me time because I would be learning only comprehension, while not spending any time focusing on developing the ability to speak. You disagree that ignoring the speaking component of language acquisition would be an effective way to save time, but that's of course the fundamental issue that we're talking about here. It doesn't help to repeat your position without any support, as if it's a new point you're making.

Iterating the process I mentioned for several years sounds like a large time investment, but there's no getting around that when trying to learn a language to a standard that I personally would find useful in my life. If not learning how to speak would cut the nevertheless lengthy process to about half of what it would have otherwise been, that would be useful to me. I'm basically trying to solve the problem of, "How could I learn French to a decently high standard for the specific objectives I have, namely gaining a reasonably deep understanding of the politics, science, and literature of the modern and historical French-speaking world, while cutting every other corner as much as possible, since my time is limited?" Learning to comprehend without practicing speaking seemed like a possibility, since I've heard of plenty of people who can understand a language without being able to speak it.

>If you spent the very small amount of time time just learning how to speak French - the FSI Phonology Course is a very good base, takes 10 hours - you'd understand what I'm talking about. You can finish that in 2 weeks rather than spending years of iteration.

I don't think you understand what my goals are here. It will take years of iteration no matter what to learn what I want to learn. I'm trying to be efficient, not spend a small amount of time as if it's going to just be a hobby that I play around with here and there.

>In German you half the time you have spaces between words in writing and the other half you don't, and whether you get a space in speech will depend on whether the word starts with a vowel or not. That's not particularly straightforward either, it's just different.

Why did you say that learning to understand without learning how to speak would possibly be doable in German, and that French in particular is the issue here? The only way I'm able to make sense of that claim is to assume that it's easier to take knowledge of the written language in German and translate it into listening comprehension, than it is in French.

When you were having trouble with listening comprehension in French, were you at a level where you could understand a lot more in writing than in speech? If so, was that because you spent a while memorizing vocabulary and grammar in writing? The main difficulty I'm having with your claims is that everything you're saying could be explained by something I've seen an almost endless supply of: language learners picking up a lot of vocabulary and grammar in writing, and then having trouble translating it into listening comprehension. Methods like what's explained in this book solve that problem entirely, and I can't tell why French couldn't be addressed with similar methods, though tailored to its peculiarities.

I see that you're native in English and Swiss German, and that you're C1 in German. That sounds like a result of your upbringing. It also seems that you're A2 in French, which I imagine is a language you've intentionally decided to study as an adult. Are there any other languages that you've studied as an adult to a decent level?

>No. There aren't a huge number of speakers who are literally native in more than one language regardless of the pair. It's fairly uncommon. Especially so with French - you won't even find it that often in Quebec.

It's incredible the degree to which you just seem to want to quibble. Look, there's not going to be an issue finding people who know about French politics who would be happy to speak in English. Some of them will be individuals who are native in both languages (since such people surely exist in high enough numbers that I could readily meet them), and some of them will be people from other backgrounds.

I don't have as much first-hand data on this topic as you, so it's easy for you to quibble with my relatively imprecise statements. But my goal here isn't to see who's able to be more technically correct within the realm of interpretation strained for the purpose of tribal argumentation. My goal is to figure out what may or may not be a good idea to pursue, and you're giving me little confidence that your statements are optimized for that purpose; you seem above all concerned with winning arguments.

u/vk2sky · 1 pointr/languagelearning

I'm finding the book Fluent Forever to be a goldmine of useful techniques. The companion website also has language-specific resources, e.g. Chinese.

u/adventuringraw · 1 pointr/languagelearning

рпивет! I've been learning Russian for the last while too, it's been an interesting language. There's a lot of approaches to starting a new language actually... you should check out Fluent Forever if you're looking for ideas. The basic gist, start with learning a good-enough version of the pronunciation, then learn the most common 700 words (or so) and then build on that from there. He's a big fan of Anki. If you have low tolerance for frustration and seeing unknown stuff, Anki's absolutely the way to go (or another SRS system like Memrise). It lets you expand the boundaries of your language ability by a bite sized chunk every day, and review everything you've learned in an efficient enough way that you don't need to spend a million hours, even if you've got 5,000 cards in your deck.

I've got two problems with Anki though. First, I burned out... I did it for years with a number of languages, and I just don't enjoy it all that much, I'd rather be using the language for something in my ability range and learn naturally as I go. I also found that with Anki, I was able to get stuff to where I 'kind of sort of knew it' but it wasn't mastered. It wasn't good enough to use reliably in conversation or recognize reliably while reading/listening. It was just enough that if I sat and thought about it, I could maybe pull it out. Do that enough and it'll stick though, so I think of Anki as a bridge to the destination, not so much the destination itself.

I don't recommend this, but I learned Russian to where I'm at mostly just with reading, even from day 1. I believe that unless you fully understand what you're reading, you're not learning, so to make sure it doesn't take a million years to get through a page, you need a good tool. Readlang's brilliant for that. You can look up individual phrases, individual words, you can even hook it up to a dictionary of your choice to see additional information on words you still don't understand. For Russian, declension/conjugation info is really important, so I made that my priority. As Grammar finishes settling in, I suppose I'll switch to Reverso, or something else with example sentences. At first I was looking up 2 out of every 3 words... now I'm just about done with my sixth book (the first five Narnia books + Harry Potter) and I'm feeling pretty comfortable. Still nowhere near reading paperback books without a truly obnoxious amount of lookup, but I'm reading very comfortably with assistance now it feels like. A fair number of sentences go by without any unknown words, which is cool... especially since there's a lot of bullshit words in what I'm reading that I don't actually need to know (archers, horseback riding, quiver, 'that place on a horse's lower neck right in front of where riders sit') but... yeah, making headway.

The only outside work I've done from reading is a few hours of grammar drills. Take your time, don't try and choke it all down at once, but a little of that when you feel like it really helps out. Russian grammar is huge compared to any other language I've ever gotten this far in (Lithuanian's arguably more complex, but I passed my old mark in that language a while ago) so... yeah. Just take your time, you'll get there. удачи!

u/bravacado · 1 pointr/language

This is a pretty great book that outlines how to use free internet resources to learn a language of your choosing. It relies heavily on google images and the spaced repetition program called Anki.

u/Dracula30000 · 1 pointr/Anki

The recording is mostly for helping my pronounciation, I try to pronounce the word & then play the recording to see how I did. It does take discipline to read the word, but I like to have an associated (similar) image for forming the memory as well.

As for the image on the same side of the card as the foreign word, I suppose one could make the same argument if one was to place the picture on the opposite side of the card - that you might just skip over it and read the English translation. And if you see the picture and pronounce the word and spell it in your head without ever reading the word isn't that what one would want to do when learning a language? Associate the word with a visual image of that thing or action - not the English translation.

As for the typing, you do you, man. But here's the link to the research I mentioned.

Anki retention algorithms are programmed to give the general user a ~90% retention on the cards, but you can change the retention interval multiplier to shift that number. My current stats put me at ~94% of reviews marked correct - that's all cards, learning, young and mature. For reference, I have 7000+ notes & 13782 cards. I guess I just have a freakishly good memory /s. But on a more serious note, I get most of my contextual review and from reading the news, etc, so YMMV.

The book Fluent Forever also has some learning methods which I have found to be very useful in language learning. I have found the author's method for using textbooks while self-learning a language. Generally, he states that placing a few grammatical examples from the textbook is best, and relying on other sources for further language immersion (like radio, TV, internet). The final reason I don't have 5 sentences for everything is because I don't have the time to do all of that input, and would rather spend it learning new vocabulary/grammar structures.

u/TripleGGG4111 · 1 pointr/Anki

Read Fluent Forever It has the best method in my view of how to use Anki for language learning.

u/s4422xFEY93176D · 1 pointr/languagelearning

Before anything read Fluent Forever

u/extra_tofu · 1 pointr/montreal

This question has been asked a lot so search previous threads.

That being said, I've just read Fluent Forever and it's a good book with some unique strategies for learning another language. You can absolutely learn French on your own. Read La Presse and watch French language TV with French (not English!) subtitles. Avoid using English as much as possible.

As far as classes are concerned, I know Cotes-des-Neiges has free weekly French classes for residents (http://www.cclcdn.qc.ca/francisation). I assume you need to live in CDN but your neighborhood might have something similar. Check out language classes at the universities as well - they won't be free but they shouldn't be too expensive either. And AFAIK, if you take a French course at any university, you will be charged the Quebec resident rate, saving you some dough.

u/RockInTheSea · 1 pointr/IWantToLearn

I'm just reading "Fluent forever" by Gabriel Wyner (www.amazon.com/Fluent-Forever-Learn-Language-Forget/dp/0385348118) in which he talks about how to efficiently learn foreign languages in general, so far it seems to me to make a lot of sense, but I don't have the experience to talk about how well it really works.

You might just want to check it out and take it from there, on his homepage fluent-forever.com he also talks a bit how to adapt his techniques from the book for chinese and japanese

u/mamainski · 1 pointr/breakingmom

I’m sorry love; it totally sucks to be alone. I don’t even live in a foreign country and I have only made one “friend” in the last 14 years of living where I am (not where I’m from). And she turned out to be a mistake. I have really gotten more out of this Reddit alone than I thought was possible; I don’t know where any of you ladies live, but we all hold each other up when shit goes down and virtually high five each other when it goes right. Yes, I would love to have physical friends, and DH has suggested I try to find a knitting group or book club at the library or whatnot to potentially make a friend in person.

TBH, i never had to make friends before - I was born and grew up in the same place, had best buddies since kindergarten, etc. so making new friends is odd for me. It’s like I instantly want to be someone’s BFF, but I know that’s bizarre. So, I’m embracing all the ladies on here right now. If I get in-person friends, that’s awesome too. But I’m so so SO thankful I found this subreddit and all the awesome ladies here.

Don’t know where you are, but perhaps there is a military base nearby? Tons of families from all over, dropped in a foreign country too. Additionally, you could download Duolingo or a similar app and learn the language! If you decide to go that route, consider reading Fluent Forever — it’s an amazing book. I actually have a digital copy I can send you if you Wamt; just PM me.