안녕하새요 여러분!
Now that isn’t it the dream? Learning a new language and never forgetting it even if you don’t live in the country.
Let’s be honest that’s quite a difficult thing. We all know how easy it is to forget a language if you don’t really practise it. Heck, I am a native French speaker and I have been losing some of my French for lack of practice. You just need to ask my family if you don’t believe me!
I have been leaving in London for almost 20 years and the only French I speak is when I call my family every week and when I go back for holidays. Otherwise, I don’t. Even though I have French colleagues at work. We always communicate in English. One because it’s rude to speak in a foreign language in front of others who don’t, and two because after 20 years, it’s just easier and often I just don’t know how to talk about work stuff in French.
Now, don’t panic, I am not completely useless in French thankfully but there are some words and nuances that I struggle more with.
So if that can happen with your own native tongue, imagine what can happen to a language you learn for fun or work or a specific event and then don’t really get to speak that often? My French friends, whom I met in London when I first arrived and lived here for about 5 years before they went back to France, they now struggle with English and often ask me for my help. We speak Franglish to each other and they can get by when they come to visit but it’s not at the fluency level it was when they lived here.
Enters Gabriel Wyner and his book ‘Fluent Forever’ and his claim that he can teach you how to learn any language you want and never forget it…A bold claim and one I can’t confirm or refute just yet as I have only just started with his technique. The technique is based on the use of flashcards and the rule of no translation.
I found this technique through the magic of targeted ads on Facebook. I spend so much time looking for language learning related sites that FB caught on. The ad was about ‘The most sponsored language app on Indigogo – a crowdfunding site’.
Gabriel Wyner, who had already written a successful book about his technique, is developing an app which will collate all of the tools he suggests in his book. So instead of going around the web and making your flashcards, they will be all in that app. The app is still in development so I can’t comment on it yet but I have contributed for Single Language (12 months subscription).
If you are interested in knowing the details and how to fund, see the link below [1]
What I am going to talk about is the technique detailed in the book.
The Principle
Gabriel Wyner speaks 7 languages. Three of them, he learned the traditional way, i.e. going to language classes and/or total immersion courses. In the grand scheme of things, if you can go live in the country of your target language, it’s always going to be the best but let’s be honest, we can’t all take time off to go live in Korea for 3-6 months so we can get fluent quicker. I wish I could but it’s definitely not possible for me.
The book doesn’t give you anything new in terms of tools. The use of flashcards is not a new concept for many students (although it wasn’t something I knew about much personally as it wasn’t really used in France when I was a student).
What is new is how he creates and uses them.
Here are some of the important points:
- Do not use English translation whatsoever (or whatever your native language is). Every flashcard should only contain words in your target language
- Use images that speak to you to associate the words with. For example for the word for ‘cat’, don’t go for the first image you find…carefully choose one that represents best what the word ‘cat’ means to you
- Set a daily review routine – that’s quite an important one as repetition is what gets words absorbed
- Learn pronunciation first – depending on your target language this may take more or less time
- Learn the first 625 most used words list before tackling complex grammatical structures
You can do all of these for free using Anki SRS (free flashcard design tool), Google images and a website called Forvo (for recordings of the words you need). Gabriel even gives you the list of first 625 most used words in English for free…you can then spend the time to translate them in your target language. Warning: this will be time-consuming…or you can download his pre-prepared set (in various languages including Korean) and the pronunciation word pairs (super useful for Korean as it could take hours to search for those difficult word pairs) for $12 each or you can get them in a bundle for $20. I did and it’s well worth the money as it really saves you hours and frankly my time is worth more than $20. He has other resources there (some even free), so it’s well worth checking out his website www.fluent-forever.com*.
If you sponsor the app on Indigogo, you get this for free (I didn’t know so I paid but I’ll get an extra month of subscription on the app instead when it’s ready).
Fluent Forever website has free video tutorials and a sample deck ready to download (for free).
I started with the method using AnkiDroid app (also available on iPhone but it will set you back £20) mid-March 2018 and I have been reviewing about 100 cards/day since (90+ days now). My vocabulary is of course vastly improved but not my grammar.
There is a specific method to learn grammar rules and hard words (for which a simple image won’t work) but I have to say I am struggling using FF method and flashcards for that. I have gone back to using the other lesson types methods via TalkToMeInKorean and KoreanClass101 for those.
Still, I think as a vocabulary building and pronunciation trainer, this is well worth a try…What do you think? Have you tried it? Will you?
Until next time…
잘 가요!
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* I am not sponsored by FF or Gabriel…I just really like what they have to offer
괜찮아요 ~ gwaenchanhayo 