Two Fabulous Articles On How To Learn A Language

As you will have picked up from some of my previous posts, I am a little frustrated with my lack of progress.

I am certainly happy with my level of activity but I am not convinced I am necessarily being efficient or effective.

I have had a long standing professional interest in accelerated learning.  And as such, I know there are ways and means that can help you learn a language faster and more effectively.

One of the reasons why I have always been interested in learning a language is because of the huge amount of material relating language learning and accelerated learning.

It has been a long held limiting belief of mine that learning a language was not for me (despite what I know about learning).

And so every so often I get inspired by polyglots (people who speak multiple languages fluently).

Introducing Tim Ferris

One of those is Tim Ferris, author of The Four Hour Work Week, The Four Hour Body and The Four Hour Chef.  All of those books are great for different reasons.  Aside from his obvious publishing and business success, Tim Ferris is a seasoned learner of languages.

Now the thing I like about Tim is that he likes to get the maximum impact with the minimum of effort.  Which means he distils everything down to its essence and takes what he calls the M.E.D – Minimum Effective Dose.  That is the least he needs to do to get the best results possible.  It’s just another way of saying the 80/20 rule.

Well with the frustration I was feeling I thought I would go and explore what Tim Ferris says about language learning.

He has an excellent blog and an even more excellent podcast (which I can highly recommend you to subscribe to).  So I popped over to his blog and did a quick search on Language Learning.  The results of the search are nothing less than Language Learning GOLD!

Introducing Two Polyglots You NEED To Know

Tim writes a lot of great stuff, but two articles that jump out are written by other polyglots.  Gabe Wyner is one and Benny Lewis is the other.

The one by Benny Lewis is called:

and the one by Gabe Wyner is called:

If you do nothing else, go and grab yourself a drink and go through those two posts.  You won’t regret it because the advice and the inspiration is priceless.

They both have books (i bought them both) and I will be sharing the key points from both as I explore and apply them myself.

 

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