• English transcript (PDF)
• Japanese translation (PDF)
• Chinese translation (PDF)
• Korean translation (PDF)
• Arabic translation (PDF)
• German translation (PDF)
• Spanish translation
• French translation (PDF)
• Portuguese translation (PDF)
• Italian translation (PDF)
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• Russian translation (PDF)

“I love languages, and I love New York. Also, it is possible I may be a wee bit compulsive. I had studied German, Spanish, and French in school, but I wanted to go more global this time. The initial plan was a year, but that soon became two years, which eventually became three years, then four, and now, nearly five years. The schedule has so far included 18 different languages involving a total of nine different alphabets and writing systems. I am plotting the nineteenth. Through my blog here, this site chronicles my linguistic adventures, some misadventures, and the mental and physical fallout of spending a lot of time outside one’s own alphabet and grammar. In 2013, I added a directory of learning-resource reviews for other people seeking to learn a new language or reinforce old skills. This site [EllenJovin.com] is intended to be a tribute to the joys of language learning, and to the extraordinary linguistic riches of my beloved adopted city and makeshift language-learning lab: New York.”

To date, Ellen has completed 3-month missions in the following languages and written over 1,000 pages of content:

• Russian: July to August 2009
• Arabic: September to October 2009
• Italian: November 2009 to January 2010
• Korean: February to March 2010
• Spanish: April to May 2010
• Greek: June to July 2010
• Hindi: August to September 2010
• German: October to November 2010
• Japanese: December 2010 to February 2011
• French: March to May  2011
• Polish: June to August 2011
• Hebrew: November 2011 to February 2012
• Dutch: February to March 2012
• Portuguese: July to October 2012
• Mandarin: November 2012 to April 2013
• Irish: May to June 2013
• Yiddish: July to August 2013
• Persian: May to August 2014

Ellen has a wonderful sense of humor (and a great deal of patience for my corny jokes!) and I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with her about all things language. I hope you enjoy listening to the conversation as much as enjoyed recording it:

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Mo’ Info

Make sure to check out Ellen’s excellent website, EllenJovin.com, for an extensive range of language product reviews.

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Susanna’s Story

Susanna Zaraysky was born in Leningrad (now called Saint Petersburg) in the former Soviet Union. As Suzanna jokes in the interview:

“All of my official documents say that I was born in a city and country that no longer exist!”

She moved to the United States at the age of 3, but continued speaking Russian at home. She refers to herself as a “heritage speaker” of Russian, with native level fluency in the spoken language but weaker literacy skills. At the age of 11, she started learning French, going on to do a home stay in Pornichet, France at age 15. During her two months there, she developed strong French skills and an even stronger love of crêpes salées (“savory crepes”).

While in France, she also started learning Spanish (all students in France are required to learn English one other foreign language of their choice), a language she went on to study more intensively when she returned to the states. The language came quickly for her as she had already been exposed to a great deal of Spanish growing up in California, and likely thanks to Spanish’s many overlaps with the French she already knew.

In college, she started learning Italian purely for fun, but opted to study on her own instead of falling asleep in early morning Italian classes designed for complete beginners.

After college, she took up Portuguese for no particular reason that she can remember. A friend suggested Com Licença!: Brazilian Portuguese for Spanish Speakers to her, which she used as both an educational tool and sleeping pill. She jokes that despite speaking 7 languages, she finds grammar study quite boring. I definitely second that!

From 2000 to 2001, Susanna worked in post-war Bosnia where she quickly picked up Bosnian. The language’s membership in the Slavic Language family (to which her native Russian also belongs) gave her a big head start in the language.

Susanna’s Language Learning Tips

You have to be willing to take on (and develop) a different personality when learning a new language.

“If you don’t feel open to moving your body in a different way, being a different a person, then that is a surefire way to fail at language learning.”

Use music as much as you can in language learning. It’s not just fun to listen to good music; music actually activates more of your brain than languages and is one of the best ways to improve your pronunciation, accent, timing, and even grammar. Spanish music, for example, is one of the best ways to learn the subjunctive as many songs talk about doubt.

“The reason people have strong accents in other languages is because they are playing the music of the foreign language in the tempo and rhythm of their mother tongue. It’s like dancing the waltz to cha-cha music.”

You can learn any language, anywhere. Use whatever resources are available to you and don’t underestimate your access to foreign languages in your backyard. As Susanna observed in post-war Bosnia, people managed to learn foreign languages using whatever radio or TV signals they could pick up.

“If someone can, in a war situation, learn a language under an extreme amount of duress, and very few resources for obvious reasons, then when people tell me, ‘Oh, I don’t have $2,000 to go to Costa Rica and pay for Spanish classes’, I just want to smack them on the head!”

You of course need to learn a language’s grammar if you want to reach a professional level in a language, but shoving grammar down your throat in the early days is probably not the best strategy for most people. It’s better to get a feel for the language first and develop a strong emotional resonance.

Get as much listening exposure as you can to your target language. This is the way children learn, and adults need to train their ears, too. As Dr. Paul Sulzberger demonstrated in his PhD thesis at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, listening to a language before you begin formal study of its vocabulary and grammar better prepares you to recognize words.

More About Susanna

For more information about Susanna, check out her excellent book Language Is Music: Over 100 Fun & Easy Tips to Learn Foreign Languages, her YouTube channel, and her website, Create Your World Books.

“I concentrated so hard that I stopped feeling pain.”

“I contemplated the untapped reserves of the human mind. The great hidden depths of the brain. I learned from it.”

After World War II, Michel moved to Los Angeles where he began a language school, continuing to refine his language teaching approach. Given his location and growing reputation for fast and effective language teaching, he went on to teach many Hollywood stars, including Woody Allen, Sofia Loren, Emma Thompson, Doris Day, Barbara Streisand, and Mel Gibson. But his star-studded résumé is not what impresses me; it is his inspired attitude toward learning that earns my respect:

“Learning should be excitement. Learning should be pleasure. And one should experience a constant sense of progression. And one would want more. That is learning to me. And a teacher is somebody who will facilitate and show how to learn.”

How the Michel Thomas Method Works

If you visit the Michel Thomas Method website, you will see a simple, only mildly marketing-esque slogan:

“No books. No writing. No memorising. Just confidence fast.”

This sums up the method fairly well. Much like the Pimsleur Approach, the Michel Thomas Method is completely audio-based. The learner is encouraged not to overtly memorize words and phrases; the brain should automatically internalize them if the teacher (in this case Michel) breaks the language down into sufficiently small chunks and then puts them back together in a sufficiently intuitive, logical, step-by-step approach. And that is exactly what The Michel Thomas Approach promises.

The Good

There is a lot to like about the Michel Thomas Method:

Available for Most Major Languages

The following Michel Thomas courses are currently available:

Now Available in iOS App Form

For those wanting to learn using 21st century tools, there is now a free Michel Thomas Method app for the iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad. Though the app and one lesson is free, you have to buy subsequent lessons via in-app purchases. This can actually be a benefit since you can pay as you go instead of shelling out money for the whole shebang at once.

The Bad

Even the best course has its downsides. Here are few elements of the Michel Thomas Method that I don’t care for:

Other Learners Can Slow Things Down

Although I liked learning Spanish alongside the other beginner students, it was sometimes a bit annoying when I was ready to move on and they were still struggling to get things right. This is one of the same reasons I don’t usually like taking formal classes: they move as fast as the slowest student.

Audio Only Has its Limitations

While I like the fact that course gets your ears and mouth used to the language first (many learners start with and get trapped in the written language), it would be nice to be able to go back later (only after completing each course) and see the words and phrases written out. Listening and speaking are definitely the foundation of a language, and Michel is right to prioritize them, but most learners will want to read and write the language as well. To help foster reading skills but without going against the method, perhaps the words and phrases from the course could be used in a fun, fictional story that reinforces what has been learned without trying to present them in a traditional, dry approach.

Cost is Prohibitive for Some

Although I think the courses are reasonably priced, especially alongside the inflated prices of Rosetta Stone, I know many learners who will have a hard time laying out the cash for these courses even at the steep discounts offered on Amazon.

Lots of Time Spent in English

Given how the method works, this is an inevitable downside, but it is a downside nonetheless. I have this same criticism of many language programs, courses, and classes, in fact, but unlike most courses, the positive results of the Michel Thomas Method far outweigh this limitation.

My Verdict

If you can afford the course or get a copy from your local library, I highly recommend using the courses for your target language or languages. I discovered his method far too late in my language learning journey and only wish I could go back in time and give myself this course.

The Language Master, BBC Documentary

The documentary shows Michel in action, teaching French to a group of British high school students who had either no previous exposure to French, or who had tried and failed. You will also learn more background about his experiences in World War II, and his failed attempts to get his method used in public schools and universities.

More than Words – The life and Work of Michel Thomas

Here is another documentary about Michel Thomas brought to my attention by a Language Mastery reader (thank you, Acutia!) It is audio only, but I think you will find it quite moving even without the visual component.

The site has been well received by most, and comes strongly recommended by many language bloggers, school teachers, and individual learners.

Steven J. Sacco, a Language Professor at San Diego State University, has this to say about LiveMocha:

“LiveMocha is the best online language program I have seen and used vastly superior to Rosetta Stone in terms of cost and the variety of language functions it offers.”

So how does this blogger feel about LiveMocha? Here’s a quick look at the good and bad as I see it.

The Good

The best aspects of social networks

With so many registered users, LiveMocha provides a massive pool of potential tutors and language partners. The best part of this quid pro quo, reciprocity-based system are the corrections provided by native speakers. It’s win-win: they get some “Mocha Points” (exhangeable for otherwise pay-only features on the site) and you get free corrections. Not a bad deal. And you can of course correct the writing and speaking samples of people learning your native tongue. There will be frequent pop-ups asking you to do just that.

Numerous languages to choose from

LiveMocha currently offers courses in 35 languages making the site quite the polyglot wonderland. The following languages are offered, though not all of them are equally fleshed out: Arabic, Brazilian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish (Castellano), Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu. Phew, that’s a lot of “languaging”!

Lots of free content

It is always a good idea to test drive new materials before opening your wallet or purse. LiveMocha offers 3 units for free, with 5 or so lesson per unit, each including a variety of activities. Which leads to the next good point…

A wide range of listening, speaking, reading and writing activities

In each lesson, you will receive multiple exposures to target vocabulary and structures, with a good mix of listening and reading input. I especially like the drag & drop writing activity as it tests your understanding of basic structures and word order without requiring overt output before learners are ready for free writing exercises.

Language Specific Pop-up Keyboards

Although most browsers allow you to insert special characters, using LiveMocha’s pop-up keyboards (which are specific to whatever language you are studying at the time) saves you a lot of time over looking for the right accent mark, upsidedown exclamation point, or funky squiggle within the sea of shapes in browser symbol directories.

Correction by native speakers who are not necessarily trained teachers

Many people would consider this a disadvantage, but in my experience, untrained teachers are often better at identifying what doesn’t sound right and providing simple examples of more natural language. Teachers tend to miss the forest for the trees, and provide prescriptive advice on what one should say, not what real native speakers actually do say. Moreover, most teachers try to “teach” you the language, and as I reiterate time and time again, languages cannot be taught.

Informal language is presented first

Opinions differ on this issue, but I personally recommend (and much prefer) learning informal language before focusing on more formal equivalents. Why? Because in nearly all cultures, we rarely use formal language. When you start out in a language, it is inefficient to spend your precious time learning infrequent, specialized vocabulary and phrases. “Pardon me, but could I trouble you for dab of Gray Poupon?” can come later. Also, informal language tends to be shorter and therefore easier to learn, and often does a better job of demonstrating the basic structures of the language, where as formal structures are often archaic, semantically opaque constructions. Besides, travelers and new foreign residents will almost always be forgiven for being a tad bit too informal.

The Bad

The good news is that all of the following problems can be overcome or side-stepped based on how you use LiveMocha. And in my opinion, the pros of the site still far outweigh these cons.

Requires speaking and writing output too soon

When to begin producing output is a highly contested issue, and as of late, there have been some heated arguments on the topic between well-known language bloggers (many of you probably know to whom I refer). In my own experience as a language learner and teacher, I stand firmly in the “later but not too late” camp when it comes to output. Speaking and writing too soon is the single greatest cause of “fossilization” (see The Linguistionary for more on fossilized errors) and often leads learners to develop a fear of speaking the foreign language.

Too much overt focus on grammar

Grammar study is an equally controversial topic among language teachers, linguists, and polyglots (see this debate between LingQ’s Steve Kaufmann and Vincent of Street-Smart Language Learning for more on the topic). In my experience, a little grammar review from time to time can be useful, but should only take up a small percentage of your time with the language. Lots of input (and eventually, lots of output) is the key to true fluency, not memorizing complex information about the language that you have virtually no chance of utilizing in real time.

Reliance on (and a prevalence of) translation

Most language learners rely on, and expect their language products to provide, translations of everything they hear or read. While translation does make the learner feel more comfortable (and a little bit here and there can be helpful), knowing the equivalent of each word or phrase in your native language is certainly not necessary to learn a language. Remember: you learned your native language without translating to or from any language. The key is to create such highly contextualized situations that you don’t need to translate. LiveMocha does a fairly good job of this with their use of annotated pictures, but they could do more to contextualize lessons (especially those for absolute beginners) by adding sound effects and video clips.

Some bad apples

With such a large community, you are bound to run into a few bad apples who abuse the system. The most common problem I encountered were users who just copied what I had written without adding any suggestions or corrections in an effort, I assume, to quickly earn Mocha Points. But as LiveMocha’s VP of Marketing and Product, Clint Schmidt, mentions during our interview, the community will quickly vote down such users and they will be removed from the system if appropriate.

So there you have it. Overall, I thinkLiveMocha is an excellent language learning site and recommend it as a supplementary material to your other learning tools.

Learn More

To learn more about LiveMocha or set up a free account, got to their website:

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Read the Transcript

Orlando: Well let me start by saying that I like your Foreign Language Mastery blog site; it’s been fun to read.

John: Thank you. I’ve ended up interviewing a number of my mentors and heroes, and I stumbled across your blog and really liked what you had to say, so I thought it would be good to share your views with my listeners and readers. So I think best would be maybe to go through those 5 fundamentals that you have on your blog. [Note: In my preparation for the interview, I accidentally missed reading No. 6.]

Orlando: Ah, sure.

John: I think that really sums up your basic stance. I’m sure there’s a lot more you could say, and we’ll fill in as we go. I think the first one was the 500 hours of study that’s required to reach a modicum of fluency.

Orlando: Right. The issue is time on task; that people underestimate how long it takes to learn a foreign language. And sometimes, even if they’re doing everything right, there’s a sense that ‘Oh, I still don’t speak Spanish!” because you don’t speak it as well as you speak English. And it’s always good to go back and tell people, “Even if you’re doing everything right, it’s not going to be a 20-hour project.” You know, I always get phone calls from people saying, “Uh, we want to negotiate with people in Mexico. Can you teach us some Spanish?” And it’s like, “Sure, but it’s not going to be a during your lunch hour for 3 weeks type of project.” So that first category is that realize that it does take time on task, and to be proficient in a foreign language, is going to take you a hunk of time.

That 500 hours is a nice number, too, because what it says is that even if you’re in a normal classroom situation and you meet 5 times a week for a whole semester, you’re still going to be way short of 500 hours. So a lot of it is you just got to spend more time on task. That’s number 1.

John: Ok, and then number 2 was about context.

Orlando: Number 2 is context, which is, words stick when you’re in the situation of the moment. Word’s don’t stick if you can’t connect them to some sort of experience or some kind of context. I often give the example to my students of a time I was sitting on a bus in Brazil, and there was this kid that was driving me crazy, jumping up and down and screaming and yelling. And the mother yelled out, “Não faça isso, filho.” (Don’t do that, son.) And I remember thinking afterwards, “Wow, command form!” And never again did I have to think about how to conjugate a command form in Portuguese. I saw the lady; I saw the kid; he was driving me crazy; and forever more, I could just say “Não faça isso, filho.” So that context of the moment really helped me have that word stick. So I think it’s a big deal to put all of your language learning into some sort of real context of a real opportunity.

John: Ok, on that note, what advice do you have for somebody who, for example, lives in the United States, and doesn’t have the opportunity to go live abroad? What can they do to create a context for themselves, so that that sticks?

Orlando: Well, you know what, the nice thing of being an adult learner is you can pretend. You can create those scenarios for yourself. You can put yourself in the situations. You can visualize yourself actually buying something, saying something. I actually think that’s one of the great opportunities of an adult learner; is we can role-play stuff. Where children when they learn a foreign language, they can never really put themselves in a role-play situation. But you see the sad thing is that a lot of people don’t know that. And so they will just take a big gigantic list of words, and kind of keep reading the list of words, and never ever try to visualize, “How are you ever going to really say this?” or “What would you really say in this real situation?”

John: You mentioned about differences between children and adults. Maybe we can go off on that tangent shortly. I think there are many, but I also think that there is a lot in common that people also underestimate. What’s your view on the similarities and differences?

Orlando: You know, I’m not a gigantic fan of the whole critical period, you’re kind of doomed after you’re an adult kind of thing. I also don’t believe, that, you know, sometimes people talk about how easy it is for children to learn a foreign language. But if you look at the amount of energy and effort they really put into it, we’re talking about 5, 6, 7 years where their whole concentration is language, language, language, playing with languages, playing with sounds, trying phrases out, communicating back and forth. There is nothing easy about the way children learn foreign languages. They’re just putting tons and tons and tons of effort and time into it. And so I think that sometimes we sell ourselves short when we say, “Oh, there’s automatic language learning that goes on when you’re a child.” Well, it’s automatic in the sense that you’re doing it every day, every day, every day, every day. But it certainly isn’t without tons of effort. And if we put as much effort into our adult language learning, as what children do into their first language acquisition, we would probably do a lot better as well.

Years and years ago, Lily Wong Fillmore did a great study, it was her dissertation, on little kids that were learning foreign languages in elementary schools. And she had a great example that kids first socialize, then they communicate, then they worry about form. And when we teach foreign languages, we do the exact opposite. We worry about form first; we worry about communication second; and we get to socialization third. And I thought it was kind of a neat observation, that that’s how kids worry about it. If they want to go play in the park, they play in the park. And that’s kind of their number 1 thing to do. And communication becomes second; form is down the road.

John: Interesting. Well, back to number 3, about schema theory and social scripts.

Orlando: Right. You know, I’m a gigantic believer in the idea of chunks, that we learn foreign languages in little chunks, little phrases, little situations. And we know how the script goes. Recently, I was the example I often give is that when I go to a bakery in a foreign country, that in the Unites States, I know the rhythm of going to a bakery. They ask what you want; they cut it open; they slice it. There’s kind of a way that you follow the pattern of buying meat, and cheese, and bread at a bakery. When you’re in a foreign language, that pattern changes. And it’s not a language issue necessarily; it’s that I don’t know the rhythm of how to keep the flow of everybody’s activities going in the bakery. So in foreign language, if you know the flow of the dialogue you’re supposed to follow, it helps you understand things.

I was recently in Rio, and when I was in the check-out line, somebody asked in essence if I had a “blah blah blah card”. Well of course I didn’t because I was a tourist. And that was not part of my dialogue. I was not ready for the lady at the checkout to ask me about if I had that card. And I went from understanding 100% of what she was saying to a bunch of garbled noise. Because I didn’t know the dialogue. And I had to have her repeat that a couple of times until I finally [realized], “Oh now I know what she’s asking for” and I could say, “No, I don’t have that.” [For] a foreigner that comes to the US, it may be that when you buy a certain thing, sometimes they say, “What’s your zip code?” Well, you’re not ready for them to ask what your zip code is. You’re just trying to buy some bread. And so you would probably not understand that question because you’re not used to that dialogue. So that’s schema theory. Schema theory is: What are the dialogues? What are the chunks? How do we put strings of words together? How do you take turns and change back and forth, and reinforce things? There’s a pattern that we do that in, in language, and the more we understand those patterns, the more we understand the foreign language.

John: That’s also why I think movies are an excellent way, but once you get…

Orlando: Well, we’ll get to that when we get to number 5 on narrow listening.

John: Good point. Ok, so number 4: input and intake.

Orlando: Yah, you see, when the second language theories first were coming out, they talked about the importance of input. And then years later, they said, “You know what? It really… It’s nice to have a lot of input, but sometimes it never sinks in. And so what really is a big deal, is what they call ‘intake’, which is input that you’re actually conscious of, that you’re aware of, that you’re concentrating on.” And you know, the words get changed. Sometimes they call it “consciousness raising”; I’ve even heard it called “input enhancement”. But basically it’s the idea that you have to be exposed to a lot of the foreign language, but it’s not enough to be exposed to it. You have to be actually listening to it; have it sink in. So your input becomes intake. And so I’m a big proponent of that, that you need to hear a lot of language, but you need to recognize it; you need to consciously be thinking of it. And see if it can soak in a little bit while you’re listening.

John: Ok, so number 5 was narrow listening and narrow reading.

Orlando: Yah, this comes from Krashen’s ideas that narrow listening and narrow reading basically means, I believe, that you get more success out of looking at a small chunk in detail than a very large, gigantic hunk, superficially. And so when you look at my materials, the clips will be 2 minutes long. And then I want the students to really study in detail what happens in those two minutes. I seem to get more out of that than I do watching a 2-hour movie. That kind of runs past me. I understand the movie but I can’t say I really learn a lot of foreign language watching that movie. But if I take that same effort and time and put it into a very small chunk of language, and study that in detail, I get a lot more out of it. So I believe that narrow listening and narrow reading does more for language acquisition than a broad, one time through sort of experience.

John: One thing though I have noticed when I look at a short chunk of material, I do agree that I get more out of it in terms of acquisition, but on the other hand, if I do watch a movie or I read a longer passage, I also can get lost in the story, instead of just focusing on, “Oh, I am learning the language”, which I think has its own benefits as well.

Orlando: When I was in China, it was my first time in China and I had a free afternoon, so I went to the movies. And I watched my first movie totally in Mandarin. And it was kind of fun to go through the experience of, “Ok, how much of this am I going to grab?” Because my Chinese is kind of survival level; it’s not fantastic Chinese by any means. But it was pretty fun to go through the whole movie and just see, “Ok, how much am I going to catch onto? No responsibility here; let me just soak in what I can soak in.” I think it’s good to be exposed to that now and again, too.

John: Number 6, then? Which I missed I guess…

Orlando: And the final one is, it’s a fairly old model, it’s called Schumann’s acculturation model. And that’s the one where you kind of lump together all the cultural and social factors that affect language learning. You know, as we’re about things like anxiety, motivation, how extroverted you are, how much you identify with the culture yourself. Do you have a girlfriend from that country? Do you love the movies from that country? Do you love the music from that country? That’s a big, big deal. You know, how much you just are the sort of personality that can just jump out and do that kind of stuff versus how much you just hang back.

I remember I had a friend in Brazil who was one of these perfectionists: “Unless I say it correctly, I’m going to say it at all.” And in the end, he never really did learn the language well because he held himself back. He was so guarded about, “Oh, I don’t want to do it wrong. I don’t want to do it wrong.” That sort of personality that can say, “You know what? I want to enjoy this food, and if I don’t say something, I won’t be able to eat it, so let me say something. I think that girl’s pretty. Let me talk to her, because I want to get to know her. I don’t care what it comes out like.”

Well I had a student a few years ago, when I took them to Venezuela, he was a music freak. And he would go out in the street, and as soon as he heard music in somebody’s apartment, he would literally stop, knock on their door, and start talking to total strangers about, “What kind of music are you playing on your radio right now?” His grammar was kind of backwards, but his ability to get to meet people and to talk to people was just phenomenal, just phenomenal. He was amazing.

John: Do you think there’s any harm in speaking too soon?

Orlando: You know, there’s no doubt that people fossilize. You kind of get to a certain level, and then if you can survive for whatever you need your language for, you kind of stop there. And you’ll see that for people who live abroad for 2 years. And after 3 or 4 months, they kind of stop their progress, and kind of never improve after that. But they kind of are able to use the language for whatever they need the language for. Part of the answer to your question is, “What do they really need language for?” And if you’re going just to socialize, just to hang out, you know, just for informal sort of things, maybe your informal Spanish or Portuguese is just fine. It may be that in other situations you need to have more precise, or let’s say “correct”, sort of language forms. I think a lot of it is not just the language learning process; it’s what are you going to end up using the language for.

In terms of speaking too soon, you know, we have the whole silent period concept where it’s good to let it sort of soak in for a while, and then you can start talking. And I think there’s some validity to the idea that you should learn how to be a listener. Too often when we’re abroad, we forget to actually listen to people, and try and soak in.” I know that sometimes when I’m abroad, I’ll say to myself, “Ok, for the next hour, I’m just going to sit and listen to people, and make little notes about things I hear. And even in languages I’ve been speaking for 30 years, I’ll still have a notebook full at the end of that hour, just because I want to hear what people are saying. So it’s a give and take. You know, there’s a point where you can fossilize, and if you don’t really, really concentrate, and force yourself to get a little better, you’re just going to get stuck there. And I think it takes a hunk of effort, to, when you feel yourself getting to that point, to actually improve and get a little bit better.

So anyway, those are the six items:

1) I think that you have to have a good time on task;

2) You need to learn language within the context of the situation;

3) I love Schumann’s…I love the schema theory of Vygostky on their scripts and chunks you need to follow;

4) I think that input should be more than input; it should be intake, so that it starts to sink in and you concentrate on it;

5) I like the narrow listening concept that Krashen has; and

6) I think we can’t ignore the big cultural factors that go into language learning.

And that’s all six.

John: Excellent. Very, very good.

Orlando: Well, it was fun talking to you today.

John: It was fun talking to you. I really appreciate your time. Talk to you again.

Orlando: Appreciate it.

Mo’ Info

To learn more about Dr. Kelm and his projects, check out his blog and grab a copy of his new book, When We Are the Foreigners.

LingQ focuses on listening and reading tasks, following the same input-based method Steve has used to learn foreign languages. But output is certainly not ignored. Using one’s LingQ points (which can be either purchased outright or earned by tutoring others or sharing content you’ve created), users can speak with tutors and get their writing corrected by native speakers. The tutors I have talked with were excellent.

Users can choose between 4 different levels:

The Good

After using LingQ for quite some time now, here’s what I’ve come to like best:

Automatically Saved Words

After spending years highlighting new words and phrases in magazines and then manually typing them into Excel sheets or online databases, this feature makes LingQ a huge time saver. Some other sites allow you to also save and review new words this way, but they don’t allow you to import your own content the way LingQ does.

Yellow Highlights

When you save words and phrases using the LingQ button, these items appear highlighted in yellow in all future texts you study. To quickly remind yourself of the meaning or pronunciation, you simply hover over the LingQ or click (depending on how you configure the settings).

Flexible Hints

When you want to LingQ a word or phrase, you can choose between popular hints, add your own, or copy and paste from the integrated multilingual dictionaries. I find that the act of creating (or at least editing) the hint or definition helps increase retention and deepen my understanding of new words and phrases.

Spaced Repetition Emails

After creating some LingQs on a given day, they will automatically be emailed to you following a spaced repetition schedule (that is, gradually longer and longer intervals between each email). You can then quickly scan through the words and hints to both refresh your memory and decide which items to review further.

Good Variety of Content

There are heaps of lessons covering a wide range of abilities and interests, and you can always import your own as I discuss next. You can browse lessons from the library by topic or level, or you can click on individual lessons to see how many new words it presents (all words not yet LingQed or marked as “known” will show up in blue).

Custom Lessons

Perhaps my favorite feature of LingQ is the ability to import and LingQ your own content. For example, I recently imported an e-mail I received in Chinese and then had a Taiwanese friend record the audio. Voila; instant content that is interesting, relevant, and perfectly tailored to my learning needs. And of course, words I had previously LingQed in other lessons automatically showed up in yellow.

The Bad

Even the best language learning system always has room for improvement. Here are few weaknesses that I hope to see fixed in the future:

Wonky Word Boundaries in Japanese and Chinese

While this issue has been significantly improved since earlier versions of LingQ, I still come across a number of Japanese and Chinese words that are improperly parsed. This tends to be more of a problem in imported texts.

Browser Glitches

When LingQing new items or hovering over existing LingQs, I sometimes run into problems getting the window to pop up. When this happens, I simply refreshed the browser and the problem went away. Not a big deal but a little annoying when you are immersed in a dialogue or story.

A Few Unreliable Tutors

Most tutors on LingQ are members themselves, and enjoy tutoring as much as they enjoy learning languages. However, I had one experience where a tutor failed to show up for a scheduled session and didn’t reply to follow up emails or messages on their wall. Fortunately, I was able to get a refund for the points I spent for the no-show tutor.

My Verdict

LingQ faces competition from quite a few online language tools with far larger marketing and development budgets, but it’s focus on effective methods, authentic content, and community help LingQ continue to survive and thrive despite comparatively fewer bells and whistles. There is no perfect system out there (nor will there ever be), but LingQ offers driven, independent language learners one of the best resources I have found to date for learning multiple languages in a natural, input-based way. Those more accustomed to formal, highly structured language programs, however, probably won’t like LingQ very much. Of course, such folks wouldn’t agree with most of what I have to say anyway…

Update

LingQ 2.0 has just been released. Myriad useful improvements to make creating and reviewing LingQs that much easier. This Apple-esque video covers what’s new:

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