Benny Lewis' 3-month quest to become fluent in Mandarin

[irishpolyglot]

@hanyu Yes, you are right that I certainly can't put 12 uninterrupted hours into Chinese every day, as I have a lot of my own responsibilities that require me to work in English. Luckily I was intentionally working over full time in November and December specifically to give me more free time now. What I do is only part-time work, but it's still several hours every day.

@jkhsu

My goal is to encourage language learners to take on Chinese. If at the end of these 3 months, people say that I've got some special language learning talent then I will be terribly disappointed. I'll explain everything I'm doing, which any other human can do.

Yes, there is a lot more to it than what you wrote, which I will continue blogging about as I apply them. Tomorrow (or very late today in Taiwan) I'll put out another blog post with a video that I feel summarises my best strategies more concisely than anything else I've done before, for this initial stage in the language. The content of the video will also answer any doubts that my motivation is to not make people think I have some special skills. I've had challenges that others haven't had, like needing speech therapy when growing up and having trouble forming my words in English at times.

I also spent six entire months living in Spain without learning Spanish. So I'm well aware of what is going on in expats' heads as they don't learn the local language. Despite these challenges if I can learn a language, anyone can!

My ultimate goal is to reduce the number of monolinguals in the world. Hopefully people can see that my heated and bold replies are motivated than this, rather than to claim that I'm cleverer than everyone else.

[jkhsu]

Great post. Thanks!

[Kurtz]

Benny,

If you only have three months, do yourself a favour - drop the Heisig and don't put too much time into characters. It is too time intensive for your project and doesn't fit your goal of interviewing in Chinese. If you develop a love for the language, you can come back to this later - but at this stage, for such a short timeframe, just focus on speaking.

If I were you, I would spend a few days just working on simple sentence drills - through some intensive repetition, you might internalise the tones and basic grammar patterns using a small vocab pool. I would agree with most, that you aren't going to achieve the level of fluency (C1) that you might aspire to, but you could - with determination - achieve some limited working proficiency with a narrow vocab set.

[Silent]

This is very unrealistic. Benny has to manage his websites, his books, create videos, write posts, write a lot of comments (not only here), eat, sleep, ....

I expect it to be exagerated but then the numbers fit so nicely:) However he claimed only two hours a day of English. Add 8 hours of sleep and a couple of hours for various other things and 10 to 12 hours of study/immersion remain.

Actually I don't care too much about the actual hours. The point is that a few months intensive work may very well match several years of work at a more modest intensity.

[irishpolyglot]

Drop the characters.... doesn't fit your goal of interviewing in Chinese.

I've said this before, but I'll clarify it: my goal is not to interview someone on camera!! That's just a video I'll put up for those curious of how well I'm speaking, which I only plan to think about just before I do it. My goal will be to have friends in the language and be able to enjoy myself in Taipei without leaning on English. I can't function in Taiwan unless I can read at some useful level.

As I've said before, working towards a test is a terrible idea. I plan to maintain Chinese permanently anyway, so I may as well do work on reading now, even if it will ultimately make my final video less impressive. There is no "if I fall in love with the language". ;)

But thanks for the tips otherwise! You are right about Heisig - it's a terrible book to actually study if you need to use the language right now. It presumes that you will get through the entire book before even really exposing yourself to the language so it's better suited to a long term strategy. I'm using it as reference instead, but am veering away from it as I use Pleco more, since I can create mnemonic images myself, although some of his suggestions are good and save me a little time.

And that concludes my English-time until the evening when I start working on the blog post! Thanks for the advice Kurtz!

[imron]

No I don't. I wasn't aware that Couchsurfing.org is something "everybody" already uses as a language learning tool?

I don't think Couchsurfing has come up as a specific way to find language partners (it has come up for other things though), but a lot of the other stuff you're saying is just preaching to the converted, and we're still waiting to see why it'll be different for you than it was for us.

I've had challenges that others haven't had, like needing speech therapy when growing up

While definitely not typical, you're not alone in that regards when it comes to Mandarin learners either.

[OneEye]

OK, so supposedly, Chinese learners are broken down into three categories:

1) Those who have Benny's same goals and use his "approach".

2) Those who have Benny's goals or higher and use different approaches, and are thus crawling on their asses backwards (whether they've achieved a higher level than he ever hopes to or not).

3) Those who do not share Benny's goals, and are thus not worth talking about. If we must talk about them, let's belittle them and talk about how they have no passion. Never mind that Benny seems to be a single guy whose job it is to learn languages and so has plenty of time to devote to the effort, if you don't put in enough effort by his standards, you're lazy and unpassionate.

Not to mention, I still have yet to see anything groundbreaking here. You had to gesture to get your phone fixed. I brought a picture of a power adapter with me to the hardware store when I first moved here. I fail to see how this has anything to do with reaching a functional level of fluency in the language. It has more to do with "how to get what you need when you don't know the language". You used English words that happen to be understood by the native speakers with whom you talked. Again, nothing to do with actually learning the language. Congratulations, you did the exact same thing that everyone else who lives in Taipei and doesn't speak Chinese would have done.

Where are these fabled learning techniques that supposedly allow you to master languages so quickly? There must be something you're doing that others don't. Naming a website where you can find people to speak with doesn't count just because most people use different websites for the same purpose. It's not a new concept, just a different site you can use for the same thing. Where's the evidence that the FSI is wrong that it takes nearly 4 times as long to learn Chinese as it does to learn French to a comparable level? You can't just throw that out because you don't like it. You need some evidence.

You tend not to answer these sorts of things, and if you do you tend to twist words, take things out of context, and generally try to put down anyone that disagrees with you (and then complain when people give you the same treatment). For example, you said I'm "just frustrated". Nothing could be further from the truth. I've learned my 250 words this week (have you?), and will learn a good chunk of new ones before the week's over. I'll have no problem reaching 3000 words, or likely more, in three months. And I'm apparently crawling on my ass backwards.

So anyway, I don't expect any real response from you. But here's hoping.

[pancake]

Loanword or not, USB is Chinese. And I didn't say using loanwords is a strategy to reach C1, come on, that's really being silly. I was just trying to share a typical exchange I had one week into learning the language.

Allow me to slightly rephrase what I wrote earlier: you did not learn the language, you had to use your L1 as a crutch to make the exchange work. Indeed you passed up a real learning opportunity to learn use stuff like 手机，修，充电器，不好使 in context. You seem strangely proud of this exchange.

You'd be crazy NOT to take advantage of the many loanwords in Chinese as soon as possible.

Many loanwords eh? Ah, you're in for a rude awakening methinks.

On a more general note, I've read your posts and seen absolutely zero evidence that you have discovered some new method of learning languages amazingly fast. Now I have libertarians leanings, so don't get me wrong. If you're able to make decent coin claiming do have done so then more power to you. But I'm not going to be part of your marketing machine. If I'm being charitable than I will claim that your technique is just clever marketing for what every language student ever already does. Mostly I suspect you're just peddling snake oil.

[gato]

I don't think Couchsurfing has come up as a specific way to find language partners (it has come up for other things though), but a lot of the other stuff you're saying is just preaching to the converted, and we're still waiting to see why it'll be different for you than it was for us.

I think his target audience aren't people like the regulars on this forum, but people who not experienced with learning foreign languages, e.g., English speakers who think learning Spanish would be a challenge. Many of us here probably have many more years of learning foreign languages than he has. It's not surprising that what he says is nothing new to us. He doesn't claim to be a language genius in any case. My sense is that he's trying to sell a product by presenting it in an whimsical, theatrical way (kind of like reality tv meets language learning). it's an attractive packaging for those who are new to foreign language, but maybe not for the regulars here who, as long-time consumer of language products, dislike exaggerated claims in such products. But what's he doing is probably no worse than Rosetta Stone, so probably should let him be on the commercial angle.

In any case, I am curious to how he progresses. I won't be surprised if he falls short of his stated objectives. If that is the case, I hope he'll be gracious enough to acknowledge it in April. But it seems that his objective has changed from something close to C1 to "learn enough Chinese to make friends", which is fuzzy enough to be hard to fail.

[Olle Linge]

I think his target audience aren't people like the regulars on this forum, but people who not experienced with learning foreign languages, e.g., English speakers who think learning Spanish would be a challenge.

I think this is spot on. Since I have actually read his book (I reviewed it for a magazine almost a year ago), I can tell you that I found very few new things in it. However, that is not to say that the book is bad, far from it. I think that the book is excellent for people who haven't learnt languages properly before. This means a majority of all the people I know. He might not present any secret new method that makes learning languages easier than we think (we as in people who actually thinks about how to learn and have spent years doing just that), but considering, as Gato said, that most people think learning Spanish to decent level is impossible, this isn't really his goal. The main advantage I see with his book and his website is that they tell people who haven't tried that languages can be learnt and that it can be done much faster than they think. Some people think it takes seven years becoming fluent in Spanish because they spent five years in school learning it without becoming fluent.

However, this is not the same as saying that he offers the same value for people who already spend most of their time learning languages or that there are a great number of useful techniques that can't be found elsewhere on the internet. I think that perhaps herein lies the problem that has sparked most of the heated debates here (apart from the actual question of whether it's possible to become fluent in three months or not, of course).

[Guest realmayo]

One nice thing about this thread is it led me to this video

by Steve Kaufman talking about Benny's initial claim that he would be fluent at three months.

Yes, another internet dude who has learned lots of languages, gives advice and also makes some money by promoting his amateur approach. But I'd never really paid him any attention before and actually I find I really agree with him, not just about Benny's Chinese goal, but also his preferred way of learning languages is very much where I'm heading as I start a new one. Though that might be because, if I remember right, several posters here like his approach which is perhaps why I've found myself already steered in that direction.

I think there's an instructive contrast between the two of them. Kenny is all about talking as much as possible from the start and avoiding what he calls anything "academic". Kaufman pushes comprehensible input (reading/listening) as the priority instead. I can see how Kenny's approach would motivate someone who thought all foreign languages were impossible, or who didn't like hard work. And the "talking lots" approach is great to impress people in a bar short-term.

But for the longer-term goal of using a foreign language at a higher level than that, I'm firmly on the "input" rather than "output" side (although with certain languages there's a case for working very hard on pronunciation right from the start too I think).

[irishpolyglot]

@Snigel Thanks - I (mostly) agree with your summary!

Since too many people here (despite very occasional helpful comments) are comparing me to Rosetta Stone (which I despise), saying I'm selling snake oil, demanding irrelevant personal information, constantly pouring really unhelpful discouragement on me, repeating the same statements that I'll fail miserably over and over again, and demanding that I explain myself when I've been ample patient with the aggressive tone in here thus far, I have to say that I'm quite sick of it, and will not be recommending the community aspect of this forum to my readers.

I've tried to let you all get it out of your system, but I can just see the unhelpful tone that too many of you have as going on endlessly. I don't have time for endless and pointless arguments; especially with my current objective.

I'll possibly continue to come back for more specific questions in different threads, as I'm sure everything you all know about Chinese can help me a lot. But frankly you guys (apparently all such great language experts, who know it all already) have a LOT to learn about encouraging those starting off in a language. You've done a terrible job at welcoming me here and at setting me on a path that would encourage me to learn Chinese better, and the attitude you all present here is exactly the kind of shite I'm trying to fight, which ultimately encourages monolingualism.

Your love for Chinese and its complexities is killing other people's chances to even get started when you present it as so impossible. It's true that you aren't my audience, since I'm trying to encourage language learning, and you don't need that encouragement. But the message you share is the kind of damage I'm trying to undo with my blog, and you all probably don't realise how many times you may have prevented someone from learning Chinese in the first place, or helped them to give up early, if you've talked to any optimistic and enthusiastic learners like me in the same way.

I'm unfollowing this thread so that I don't start my little time online to unwind in English after a rough day struggling in a strange country with no friends yet with such energy sappers any more; I need a community who will both tell me to be realistic and at least point me in the right direction. Only a small number of you here have been doing that, and I thank you for it, but the noise of everyone else's contributions is drowning your help out.

I need to use my time learning Chinese efficiently and share my struggles and minor victories with people who treat me like a human being. I thought this forum's community could help, which is why I was trying to clear all this confusion people have about what I'm doing, but I have to give up at a certain stage. I'll only come back for technical questions in future.

You'll see how I'm doing on my blog in future, but this is the video I was talking about earlier (my TEDx talk). I will no longer be updating in this thread and expect it to turn to nothing but laughs at mistakes I make as I upload videos, although I hope it just dies. If anyone has any constructive criticism that can actually help me, please send them over to me in the comments on the blog as I write my updates. Thanks.

[roddy]

Funniest. Topic. Ever.

[imron]

Funniest. Topic. Ever.

Luck of the Irish?

[roddy]

[renzhe]

Well, that's disappointing.

EDIT: But I find it interesting that the thread over at how-to-learn-any-language.com is basically a carbon copy of this one.

[roddy]

To be honest I was keen to close it anyway - any additions to the sum total of human knowledge occured in the first two pages, the rest has just been going round in circles. I appreciate some people might enjoy that, but it makes me dizzy and it distracts from our core business.

[skylee]

Please close it.

[Guest realmayo]

I did see this on another website:

This horse has been beaten several times now and nothing new comes of it. Everyone has stated their criticisms and counterarguments ad nauseum. Any future threads on the topic will be deleted or closed without a warning. This goes for Benny lovers as well as Benny haters.

[Meng Lelan]

Please close it.

A green point to skylee to indicate agreement. I am unfollowing this thread so I can spend more time studying Chinese my way.