The GO Method

Breaking barriers to language learning

Even if you don’t have time nor talent

Gerhard Ohrband

with Tim Schneider

Cover design: Daria Nasakina

Check us out on

https://thegomethod.org/

For coaching sessions and company webinars:

[email protected]

New vocabulary with synonyms

Table of contents
Are you a blocked language learner? ..................................... 3
11 common excuses to give up ............................................... 5
What is in it for me?................................................................ 6
My story – How I can help ...................................................... 8
1. Demolishing myths and misconceptions about learning
foreign languages .................................................................. 13
2. Strategy and goal-setting .................................................. 22
3. Finding resources, role models, mentors and accountability
partners ................................................................................. 30
4. Time management ............................................................ 37
5. Your personalized language training plan......................... 42
6.Techniques ......................................................................... 48
6.1 Reading out loud to a metronome.............................. 48
6.2 Reading with a finger between your lips .................... 50
6.3 Karaoke/playback speaking ........................................ 51
6.4 Learn a language by listening to popular music in that
language. ........................................................................... 52
6.5 Thinking in a foreign language .................................... 53
6.6 Pattern sentences ....................................................... 55
6.7 Generate sentences with a dictionary ........................ 56
6.8 Speaking in front of a mirror ....................................... 57
6.9 Prohibit your native language ..................................... 58
6.10 Simultaneous interpretation – in daily life ............... 58
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 6.11 Consecutive translation with simple sentences........ 59
6.12 Conjugate entire sentences ...................................... 59
6.13 Role playing ............................................................... 61
6.14 Writing a journal ....................................................... 63
6.15 Explaining words from your native language in a
foreign one ........................................................................ 65
6.16 Play with different tenses ......................................... 66
6.17 Speed reading ........................................................... 67
7. Useful attitudes and habits ............................................... 71
8. How to overcome fear, self-sabotage and other obstacles
.............................................................................................. 77
9. Measuring your progress .................................................. 81
10. Typical questions, and answers ...................................... 85
11. How to use the GO Method to get more out of your
current language lessons ...................................................... 93
12. How to improve your teaching with the GO Method ..... 95
13. Wrapping it up – establishing a regular review process102
Useful links .......................................................................... 105
Recommended readings ..................................................... 106
About us .............................................................................. 107
Contacts and services.......................................................... 108

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Are you a blocked language learner?
Language is a fruitful playground for life-long learners.
From cradle to grave, we struggle to make ourselves
heard and understood. Even in our native language, we
feel overwhelmed and sometimes flat-out helpless in
various situations: job interviews, public speaking in
the classroom or on television, expressing our
condolences, or writing convincing sales copy.

All of this is compounded when we set out to learn a

new language. Learning foreign languages is often
related to fears, myths, and misconceptions so that
many of us give up somewhere along the way. We set
out eagerly on our language-learning journey: inspired
by a recent trip abroad, or impressed with one of our
friends’ prowess in ordering in Italian at a restaurant.

We dive right into it. We check dozens of internet pages

and materials, freely available. We may even enroll in
a class – online or at a local language school.
Nevertheless, after some weeks, soberness starts to
set in. After some initial progress in learning the
alphabet, and the names of animals and fruit, how to
greet and make small talk, and even singing engaging
and “positive” songs, we feel stuck. We feel that the
process is turning out to be longer than expected; that
we need to make more effort; that we lack “talent” for
languages. Then we convince ourselves that learning
that particular language was not as urgent as we
initially thought. Of course, it would have been
charming to learn some Thai for our next vacation in
Thailand. However, what if we choose next time to visit

3
Cambodia instead, or Prague? Does it mean we need
to learn a new language for every new country we visit
and to enroll in month-long training?

Then, there are those of us who have already learned

one or more foreign languages, had language XYZ for
many years in school, or we may even have had to use
it in our job. Nevertheless, we feel we have reached a
glass ceiling. With the many years of studying and even
applying it, we should be perfect speakers by now.
Instead, we feel embarrassed communicating in front
of others. We still have that funny accent; foreigners
offer to switch to English – to make communicating
easier. We do not understand all of our clients, and we
engage in guesswork while talking on the phone to
them.

This small book is for all of us (the author included)

who, at times, feel frustrated and stuck in our language
learning process. It offers us strategic and playful
techniques for building a system of constant language
improvement: the GO Method.

Enjoy!

4
11 common excuses to give up
 I have already tried to learn foreign languages
but without much success.
 I do not have enough time to learn another
language.
 I am convinced I do not have enough talent for
this.
 Language courses are boring.
 I am easily exhausted while learning.
 It is difficult for me to maintain a learning
routine.
 I am not disciplined enough.
 My expectations are too high. I am a
perfectionist.
 I cannot find suitable teachers.
 I want to save money instead of enrolling in
language courses.
 I will be alienated from my peers for being too
smart.

5
What is in it for me?
Abraham Lincoln is quoted to have said: “Give me six
hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first
four sharpening the axe”. F.M. Alexander, the
originator of the Alexander Technique, referred to
“end-gaining” as the habit of jumping into action
without constructive and conscious deliberation as to
the best means to attain those ends.

Therefore, let us take it slowly and begin by investing

in the right mindset. Much of the failure in learning
languages (and in so many other human endeavors like
sports, music, and art) can be traced back to a
disregard for proper thinking and strategy at the
outset.

How will we proceed in this small book?

We begin by hammering at some of the most self-

limiting myths and misconceptions, impeding us in our
language journey. Nobody reading this book starts as
a tabula rasa. We have been fed much “propaganda”
on how we should learn and how clever (or not) we are.

We set SMART goals related to our target language,

where SMART stands for specific, measurable,
achievable, relevant and time-bound.

Then we can attack practical issues:

 time management;
 finding an accountability partner;
 identifying necessary resources;

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 creating our personalized language learning
plan;
 applying efficient techniques used by polyglots;
 overcoming obstacles on the way, and
developing a growth mindset.

7
My story – How I can help
So, what makes me an authority? Well, I do speak
between 12 and 21 languages at various levels ranging
from simultaneous interpretation for public dignitaries
and executives, to reading Brian Tracy books (one of
my favorite pastimes). But the internet (check out
Youtube) is rife with polyglots communicating in many
more languages than I do, or of people who can imitate
numerous accents and dialects.

Rather, my authority comes from the fact that I am like

you. I, too, struggled with languages. I, too, have felt
the twin stings of self-doubt and inadequacy.

Sure, I studied psychology at the University of

Hamburg with a focus on educational psychology, and
motivation in particular. My master's thesis was on
blocked lay musicians, which bears a similarity to
blocked foreign-language speakers. I have also lived
for more than 10 years outside of my home country,
Germany, working in multi-linguistic environments.
And, I've worked with literally thousands of students
on their road to language learning. In the process, I've
spent thousands of hours perfecting the GO Method.

On the other hand, I was never especially good at

languages in school. My classmates made fun of my
English. I gave up on French early on. I passed my last
exams in Latin only thanks to copying off of classmates.
And, even in my native language, German, I always felt
uncomfortable. I became frustrated when friends
(especially female ones) often asked me to repeat while

8
speaking on the phone, either because I spoke
unclearly, or did not finish my sentences.

At school and university, I shunned public speaking

whenever it reared its frightening head. That is why I
soon gave up on reading presentations from a sheet of
paper as my trembling hands and voice would
frequently betray my fear. In truth, anything involving
verbal or written expressions made me feel
incompetent, and I avoided making and receiving
phone calls, writing Christmas letters – not to mention
how hard I worked to avoid going to potential job
interviews.

Somewhere around the last years at high school, we

visited the state job agency, to find out about what jobs
we were best suited for. A leaflet there suggested that
most job seekers know some English; and that very
few speak a more “exotic” language like Portuguese. I
had found a glimmer of hope for a career. Let others
go to business or law school. I had found my niche.

In the local library (I come from a small country town

in Northern Germany), I checked out textbooks for
different languages. The introduction of one carried an
advertisement for other books of the same series. It
said something like this, “Most people find learning one
new language hard. With our method, it becomes very
easy. Therefore, why not learn eight languages at the
same time?”

Done deal, I said to myself and embarked on my

journey of studying several languages in parallel. I

9
made many mistakes, and I still make them. I wasted
years in experimenting with various methods. So, an
objective of this book is to help the reader avoid some
of my mistakes. However, keep in mind that a certain
degree of trial and error is part of the journey. It is not
about getting it “perfectly” right from the beginning.
Rather, it is about enjoying the journey more so that
you do not get trapped by self-defeating ideas or mired
in perfectionism that often leads to procrastination.

However, the book’s content is not so much about my

own experience and strategies. A common objection is
that I may be “gifted” or that the method worked for
me personally, but not for other, more “ordinary”
students. That is why I included only the techniques I
have tested while teaching a few thousand students
over the course of more than 10 years. These students
have come from many different countries, so I know
these techniques are effective cross-culturally.

Nonetheless, every human being is unique – an

individual. What works for me – and even for hundreds
of others – may not necessarily bring you the same
results.

Just keep an open mind and test the information here.

One last thought before diving into the material: In

business literature, there are many “get rich quick”
schemes. This is not a “speak fluently quick” book. It
helps you build a system for life-long learning, with
results compounding over time.

10
Much of what you will read here is highly opinionated.
You may even become angry, or feel that it challenges
your beliefs.

You may be surprised by how orthodox many of us are

in regard to attitudes on teaching and learning. Often,
we accept more readily criticism and even mockery of
our own religious values than we doubt opinions on
education.

That is understandable. For many of us, public

schooling was a 12- or 13-year sentence with forced
intellectual labor. Threats, punishment, envy and group
pressure abounded. Non-conformity is still considered
in many circles to be dangerous. Thus, whenever you
encounter resistance inside, try to reason it out.

Remain skeptical, and start gathering evidence. This

book is not the “end all, be all”. Take it as a starting
point for formulating hypotheses, later to be tested in
practice through your own research.

What not to expect of this book?

This book is not your average ”motivational”, inspiring
self-help book. No ”You are great, awesome or a
badass” here.

I wrote it as an instruction manual for self-

experimentation. No fluff, and as little repetition as
possible.

Most probably, you will feel that you would like to go

deeper into certain topics. I tried to give as many

11
recommendations on other books and key words for an
online search as possible.

Now, let us dive right into it. Are you ready?

Let’s GO!

12
1. Demolishing myths and misconceptions
about learning foreign languages
 Language learning takes too much time; it
should be a much faster process.
 I need to speak perfectly.
 The best period for quickly and efficiently
learning a foreign language is during childhood,
and I’ m too old.
 I need to get rid of my accent and I cannot do
it.
 I need to live in a foreign language environment
to effectively learn a new language.

Do you remember the famous Jim Rohn quote? “You

are the average of the five people you spend the most
time with!” Specifically, that includes how we think
about our own abilities, and about how to tackle
difficult tasks like learning a foreign language.

Few of us have taken the time to review scientific

studies on language acquisition; many foreign
language instructors have not either. In a speech at
Monash University, Australia1, Professor Farzad
Sharifian mentioned the prevailing problem – that
many native speakers teaching English abroad do not
have any formal training in teaching methods. Nor have
they studied the grammar of their native language
thoroughly.

1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ9bYHzM8NE&t=3990s
(retrieved February 28th 2017)
13
The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung reported a shocking study on April 17th,2007.
More than one thousand first-year native students
enrolled in German language studies (to later become
middle and high school teachers of German)
participated:

“A grammar test at Bavarian universities has

now highlighted blatant deficiencies in the
German knowledge of its students. In a
questionnaire for first-year students …, for only
ten percent, were the results "satisfactory" or
better. More than two-thirds of the students did
not have the grammar knowledge of fifth and
sixth graders.”

Let us have a look at commonly held opinions on

language learning:

“It takes too much time; it should be a much

faster process”

John Lee Dumas from EOfire regularly warns his

listeners (and guests): “Compare and despair”.
Nonetheless, comparing ourselves to others seems to
be an inbuilt, evolutionary mechanism. Even without
other humans around, we constantly look for a base in
our environment from which to gauge our
performance. We also look to that same base to guide
us in decision-making.

One frequent metric in language learning is how quickly

we master a new language. This is a very tricky and
easily self-defeating task.

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Of course, we want to learn something as quickly as
possible. Moreover, we want to tell others we reached
our goals as quickly as possible. What do we typically
brag about when speaking about foreign languages?
We boast of how many languages we speak, and, how
little time it took us to master the newest one.

Who tests our language abilities? How do we know

someone who claims to speak a certain language is
actually fluent? What does fluency mean?

There is a lot of uncertainty in this area, as

standardized language tests also do not necessarily
correlate with real-life language proficiency. Students
orient their learning efforts towards passing exams
while neglecting other skills necessary for effectively
using a language. Others perform more poorly in tests
but obtain tangible results in talking to customers.

“I need to speak perfectly”

Few of us bother breaking down what perfection means

in the context of language. Knowing all world capitals
and flags by heart is a finite task, as new countries
rarely appear; learning about all participants in a sports
competition, too. “Perfection” is within reach. But what
does perfection mean when we consider our own native
language?

Are Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Marilyn Manson,

Lady Gaga and others perfect speakers of English? Are
they as perfect as contemporary and former
intellectuals and writers? Or does language consist of a

15
variety of open-ended scales for grammar, vocabulary,
voicing, etc?

There are various estimates of how many words there

are in different languages. The results vary a great
deal, due to different methodologies of counting, and
are often controversial in the scientific community and
because superiority of language is often tied to
nationalistic pride. What is not controversial is the fact
that even university professors do not possess the
“complete” standard vocabulary in their own native
language, let alone the specific vocabularies in all fields
of study and industry. (How well do you know terms
used by pilots, ship captains, computer scientists,
accountants, classical musicians, carpenters or
rheumatologists?)

So you see, our quest for perfection will always lead to

frustration. If even stellar intellectuals cannot achieve
that in their own native language, who are we to self-
sabotage over falling short of this unrealistic goal?!

Instead, from the beginning we should set clear goals

regarding what we are planning to achieve and why.

We will return to that in the next chapter “Strategy and

goal-setting”.

“The best period for quickly and efficiently

learning a foreign language is during childhood.”

While this seems to be a very plausible argument, with

many studies apparently supporting it, there are quite
a few issues here.

16
Children learn their native languages in a
fundamentally different way than most adults approach
foreign languages. Have you heard of anyone who
learned first to read and then to speak in his or her
native language? On the other hand, who first
memorized the alphabet and then produced sounds?
Probably not. Children are granted yearlong periods of
experimentation with sounds and grammar before
“correct” sentences are expected from them. Adults are
impatient and want perfection right from the beginning,
becoming nervous when they cannot produce ideally
structured sentences after “only three months”.

How can we then compare two completely different

methods of learning?

Moreover, even if it were true, that the human brain is

more malleable during childhood and adolescence:
what are our options? Should we give up, or use it as
an excuse for a lack of results? Maybe the latter stems
not so much from our adultness, but from the fact that
we approach language learning the wrong way, that we
do not use suitable strategies and techniques.

Worldwide, there are millions of students, quite

unsuccessfully spending years and years of language
instruction in public schools, or in what John Taylor
Gatto would call, “weapons of mass instruction”
committed to “dumbing us down”. On the one hand,
there are many adults who achieve mastery of a foreign
language later in life. One of my violin teachers started
to learn Polish and Ukrainian in his late sixties, just to
be able to travel to Poland and Ukraine and to give

17
presentations on old instruments in the respective
languages.

And, should we wait for a “definitive” scientific study

on the matter before deciding whether to commit or
not to a foreign language? Or should we rather heed
the advice that the best moment to start something
new is gone, and the next best moment is now?

“I need to get rid of my accent, and I cannot do

it”

Who says we should speak without an accent? And in

what accent should we speak? What is the “right”
accent for English? Is it “Oxford English”, British
Received Pronunciation (R.P.), or American standard
pronunciation? Why not Australian, Jamaican or Indian
English? All spoken by “native speakers” of English.
Every person (native or non-native speaker) who
speaks English, does so with an accent.

One tip I give my students in this regards is to look for

eminent speakers who migrated to a respective country
long ago. How accent-free do they speak say, German,
after living decades in Germany? A typical result from
this exercise is that it turns out to be almost impossible
to find prominent migrants who are not somehow
“betrayed” by their accents.

Of course, speaking “accent-free” or possessing a

highly-valued accent may be desirable. In fact, in some
cultures speaking clearly but having an accent can be
a big advantage. Consider a large number of British
actors and celebrities in the US. Using techniques

18
explained further in the book will make speaking
almost without an accent an attainable goal. But from
the outset, a more realistic goal would be to strive for
clear pronunciation, since a major function of language
is to be understood by others. The “perfect” accent is
just the icing on the cake.

“I need to live in a foreign environment to

effectively learn a new language.”

From observation, this opinion is often a front for the

following reality: “As long as I am still in my home
country, I will not make great efforts, because a) I do
not have the necessary environment to stimulate me,
or b) the corresponding environment will force me to
learn the new language lightning-fast.”

As with many similar opinions, it serves as a handy

ego-defense when confronted with failure: “How could
anyone possibly expect me to learn a new language at
my age, especially not being in the respective
country?”

It is a rationale for not putting in the necessary effort

upfront.

In reality, there are many counterarguments for a) and

b).

On the one hand, it may be easier and more effective

to learn a foreign language in your home country. You
can focus all your mental energy on the learning
process, and do not need to worry about adapting to a
new culture, new food, looking for apartments, etc.

19
Then, the language environment we are in can greatly
influence how we learn. Many languages are highly
dialectal, increasing the risk that we need to learn two
new languages in parallel: for example having to learn
both Swiss German and standard German in a rural
area of Switzerland.

On the other hand, being in the respective environment

does not guarantee an automatic “language intake”, as
many of us would prefer. The fate of many a migrant,
not only in Europe, shows that people can live quite
successfully for years in a foreign country without ever
learning the host language.

Now that we lashed out against some of the most

prevalent myths, having hopefully shaken the
foundations of many beliefs held dear until now, let us
turn to a systematic approach to building our language
learning system.

Recommended readings
Steve Kaufmann’s “The Way of the Linguist: A
Language Learning Odyssey” is an enticing and easy
read for an evening or two. It contains both the
author’s journey as well as thematic essays. All
chapters are extremely short.

If you want to want to follow your suspicions about the

rottenness of most of our current education system,
John Taylor Gatto’s books are a must: ”Dumbing Us
Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory
Schooling”, ”Weapons of Mass Instruction: a
Schoolteacher’s Journey Through the Dark World of

20
Compulsory Schooling” and ”The Underground History
of American Education”. Although he taught English,
the books are not specifically related to language
learning. However, whether we like it or not, knowing
the roots of a disease is often the first step in curing it.
Similar books are Murray N. Rothbard ”Education: Free
and Compulsory” and Charlotte Iserbyt’s ”The
Deliberate Dumbing Down of America”.

21
2. Strategy and goal-setting
Before we begin practicing, it is worthwhile to invest
some time in clarifying our motivation. We all have the
impulse to act quickly. We have a desire and we
immediately want to satisfy it. Discomfort stems from
the discrepancy between the present moment and the
future state, and we want to get rid of it immediately.
That is natural. It represents our animal heritage. In
nature, presented with a stimulus, animals react
impulsively: fight or flight. In the case of disease, they
grab some herbs or other things found in the
environment.

Man has come only quite recently out of his symbiosis

with nature, and lives now in an increasingly artificial
and complex world. Quick and instinctive reactions that
were adaptive thousands of years ago, may prove
dangerous today.

What is required today is to move out of instinctive and

unconscious behavior toward conscious and
constructive behavior.

With regard to languages, let us pause and reflect:

 Why do I want to do this?

 What exactly do I want to achieve?
 What are the most appropriate means to
attain my goals?
 How will I know that I have reached the
finish line?

22
There are many different motivations for learning
languages:

 impressing others
 meeting others’ expectations
 becoming more employable
 getting along in a foreign country
 fascination with new cultures
 etc. etc.

Psychological research (and not only) shows the

following.

Being motivated by an inner drive (intrinsic motivation)

leads to more sustained learning than being motivated
by external rewards and punishment (extrinsic
motivation) alone. Framing your goals as achievement
goals (“I want to improve my pronunciation”), leads to
better results than setting avoidance goals (“I don’t
want to make a fool of myself with my strange
accent”).

Moderately ambitious, attainable and specific goals,

coupled with regular feedback, predict higher success
rates than general and over- or under-ambitious goals
(“I want to speak perfectly”; “I just want to say hello
and goodbye in XYZ”).

The well-known SMART formula is useful also in this

context. There are many interpretations for the letters.
For the sake of clarity, let us stick to

 S: specific
 M: measurable

23
  A: actionable
 R: relevant
 T: time-bound

With languages, we often set goals like this. “I want to

speak language XYZ fluently”. This is neither specific
nor measurable. We will go fishing for easy
compliments. Is it actionable? Most probably, we will
fall for some easy cure, promising fluency at lightning-
speed. Here in Moldova, some language schools post
advertisements like “Perfect English in just one
month”. Really? That means those schools are much
more successful than their counterparts in the USA
teaching American children English. Is it relevant? Do I
really need to learn all the words in a target language
to be able to converse freely in all professional
settings? If I am currently not reading and discussing
topics like engineering, medieval poetry, and medicine,
why should I force myself to do that in a new language?
Why not focus on what I really like to talk about, and
do it well?

Exercises
Let us get specific using the table below. Introduce
tentative numbers. Later on, after the first weeks or
months, you can always change them.

How many words do you plan to learn? How many

grammar rules do you want to know well? How long will
your sentences be, with how many words on average?

24
Reality check: How many words does a typical sentence
in your native language contain? Make some statistics
observing the people around you, but also yourself.

Often, we have higher ambitions in a foreign language

than in our native one. We may say, “I have problems
building longer sentences”. In reality, during lessons
we may create sentences that are already much longer
than typical sentences in our own language. However,
because we have never set a specific target for

25
sentence size, we always feel unsatisfied by our
ultimate performance.

Why do you want to learn a foreign language?

Motivation answers the question of why we engage in
a certain activity. It consists of the following three
elements:

Direction: What do we choose to do?

Effort: How much effort do we make?

Perseverance: How long do we persist?

The concept of “opportunity cost” means that while

learning a language, we are paying a price by not being
able to do something else at the same time. We could
have gone to the movies, learned to cook or danced or
watched sports.

Most of us have chosen to learn a language at one point

or another. We bought textbooks, downloaded audio
material and even signed up for classes. What effort
did we put into that endeavor? How long did we persist?

If you are like most people, not very long. Most people
drop out very quickly, often before the introductory
course has even finished.

So why do we want to learn foreign languages? To give

our career a boost, to impress others, or is it out of
sheer enthusiasm for communicating in a new
language?

According to the catalog of world languages by

Ethnologue, in 2009, there are 6,909 different
26
languages. At the time of the 1961 census, in India
alone, there were more than 1500 languages in use. So
why did we choose our target language, and not
another one out of the more than 6,000?

What are your main motives for learning language

________?

I want to learn it because …

1. _______________________
2. _______________________
3. _______________________
4. _______________________
5. _______________________

Link your new language to your interests

Typically, we set out to learn a foreign language with
standard textbooks. They represent a “one-size-fits-
all” approach. As a result, the material often seems
dull, unattractive, artificial and irrelevant.

So, early on, let us make a commitment to connect the

new language to topics of our personal interest.

For example, during my university studies in

psychology I read almost all materials in languages
other than German. The same refers to other hobbies:
I always try to find podcasts, videos or books on things
that intrigue me, in the languages I am currently
learning.

Which of your hobbies could you link to the language

you plan to learn?

27
There are specialized blogs, news sites for almost
anything, as well as forums, and Facebook or LinkedIn
groups for all professions and hobbies; not only in
English. On Youtube or other video sites, you can find
free material on how to fish, knit, how to train your pet;
you can learn accounting or IT skills. Why not discover
the multiple functionalities, currently unbeknownst to
you, in Microsoft Word, Excel, or even just in your
computer or cell phone?

In short, you can find information on almost any

subject in a variety of languages. You become more
productive and save a lot of time while engaging more
deeply with your favorite hobby.

For example, for many years, I was a diehard metal

fan. At that time, the internet was just developing.
Otherwise, I would have spent many hours a day
watching interviews with my favorite bands, checking
out review sites, commenting in forums, or even using
video lessons on Youtube to play along to my favorite
songs.

Whatever your hobby, area of interest or passion may

be, let us plan for finding material in the target
language, by completing the table below. Alternatively,
choose something you need to become better in
(privately or in your profession).

28
Recommend readings:
Brian Tracy’s ”Goals!: how to get everything you want
– faster than you thought possible.” Easy to read,
extremely actionable.

Eliyahu M. Goldratt’s and Jeff Cox’ ”The goal: a process

of ongoing improvement”. Goldratt’s Theory of
Constraints is world-famous in the area of project
management and production. This book is a business
novel, explaining difficult concepts in an easy-to-grasp
manner. It is very helpful to identify your constraints
in learning a new language. The respective constraints
and ”bottlenecks” may differ for learning Spanish
compared to Chinese. They may also depend on your
desired goals and outputs, on your current level of
proficiency, your personality, preferences and abilities,
as well the resources available for learning.

29
3. Finding resources, role models, mentors
and accountability partners
In the previous sections, you have started questioning
some commonly held myths and misconceptions on
learning a foreign language. You hat set yourself
SMART goals while exploring your motivation. You have
planned which of your hobbies, areas of interest and
passions you could link to your new language.

In this chapter, we will discuss strategies for finding the

necessary resources.

A good way to start is to procure:

 dictionaries of different sizes. I recommend a

very small one that fits your pocket, which you
can, therefore, peruse during the day,
whenever you have spare moments;
 a folder, that will later become your
personalized grammar folder;
 a book on the grammar of the target languages.

If you already know another foreign language, say

Spanish, and you want to learn Russian, you could buy
also a Spanish-Russian dictionary, and thus practice
both languages at the same time.

Create folders on your computer, in Evernote or Google

Drive, or on whatever platform you are using, to
deposit and administrate incoming material.

Create collections of downloaded MP3s and videos.

30
Set up a link collection of relevant websites (I use
www.symbaloo.org for that purpose).

In the link collection, you archive:

 links to newspapers, TV and radio stations,

podcasts;
 resource sites for the respective language;
 dictionaries and translation tools;
 any other interesting material.

Review that link collection regularly and delete

whatever is unnecessary. Keep it a lean treasure trove
of excellent material, not a burdensome hive of semi-
interesting sites.

Your grammar folder

In your personalized grammar folder, you keep the
most important rules and tables: declensions and
conjugation, lists of irregular verbs, lists of prepositions
etc. There are also many forms of word lists online:
“The 100 (or 1000) most commonly used words in
XYZ”. Often, you can also find word lists for specific
domains and professions: for IT experts, medical
doctors, journalists, etc.

Your folder should be a living document. Make a

commitment to check and update it on a given day each
week. Sort its content according to the frequency of
use, and eliminate material you never use, or archive
that in a bigger, reserve folder.

31
Apply the 80/20 rule during updates. What topics in
grammar should I focus on? What rules will make the
biggest difference if I know them?

Make it a habit of opening your grammar folder once a

day to review one table or rule (put that in your
language-training plan; see the respective chapter).

Role models
As in sports, music, business or religion, it is motivating
and highly practical to have role models.

Who are five people that speak your target language,

not necessarily as native speakers, and that you want
to emulate? Think of film stars, authors, musicians,
scientists or YouTube channel hosts from the respective
country.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Review and update that list periodically. Why did you

include each person? What do you specifically find
worthy of modeling your speech after? It could be
fluency, beautiful sound quality of a voice, richness in
vocabulary, precision in word choice, etc.

32
Mentors
Most entrepreneurs stress the role of mentorship in
their success. Do you know of anyone who has already
tackled your language? Why not search LinkedIn for
language skills and ask your contacts about their
experiences? Or join forums on certain languages?

Each language has its difficulties. Mentors can help us

obtain a realistic picture of how long it takes to master
them.

Accountability partners
An especially useful arrangement is that of having an
accountability partner. In the ideal case, both of you,
or even more than you two, are working on the same
language. However, that doesn’t need to be the case.
Many around you are in the process of learning and
improving a foreign language. And, even if not, ask
your spouse, a relative or a friend to become your
accountability partner.

You can do many things. A simple starting point is to

share your personal language training plan with them,
and to establish fixed intervals for coming together
(also virtually on Facebook or by phone) for reviewing
your progress.

Exercise: learn from polyglots

Search on YouTube or Google for cue words like
“polyglot” or “language talent”. Watch three lectures,
interviews or other material online. Read at least three
blog posts with recommendations from polyglots.

33
Summarize them, extract their essence and write five
useful attitudes and techniques in the table below.

Not all methods or attitudes will be suitable for you.

Nonetheless, in a scientific spirit, it is worthwhile to
consider them, to weigh their advantages and flaws,
and to experiment with the most promising among
them.

Exercise: Make a list of virtual mentors

Find pages with free resources, tips by experts in
learning and teaching foreign languages.

Make two separate lists: one with general tips, and

another specifically for the language you want to learn
or improve. Introduce the links and names of the sites
in the table below, together with notes of the kind of
information you can get on the respective pages. Then,
administrate your links in your favorite browser, or use
a free app like Symbaloo.

34
Exercise: interview advanced students
Find among your friends and acquaintances five people
who speak a foreign language well. Ask them, what was
useful for them in learning the foreign language, what
obstacles they encountered and how much time it took
them to reach fluency.

Warning: As we like to show off with our houses and

big cars, posting pictures on Facebook, we tend to
create a favorable image also of our language abilities.
Do make sure the people you are speaking to don’t feel

35
that they are being interviewed for “People” magazine,
but rather ask for brutal sincerity.

Introduce the results in the table below.

Again, not all suggestions will refer exactly to your

situation. Every human is unique, with his or her
individual capacities and life situations. We are just
developing a curious mind, becoming receptive to what
we can learn from others.

36
4. Time management
One of the most common pain points in learning a
foreign language is a lack of time. (Or imagined lack of
time.) In reality, we just have other priorities. Instead
of doing our daily routine for studying our language, we
often “invest”, hours a day, in news consumption,
hanging out on social media sites, watching Netflix or
chatting with friends.

All of that is perfectly legitimate. However, if we want

to have some success in foreign languages, we need to
rearrange our daily schedule a bit.

There are lots of books and online courses on time

management. It will certainly be useful if you peruse
one or more of them.

Let us focus on some basic principles, applicable to

learning languages.

The 80/20 rule

Most of you have heard about the 80/20 rule already.
There are many applications for it. In principle, it states
that some activities have a disproportionate impact on
results, compared to others.

Applied to language learning we can state:

 20% of all grammar rules account for 80% of

our communication;
 20% of all words are used 80% of the time.

Such statements will surely provoke much protest

among language scholars. After all, there is much

37
debate as to what is the precise proportion, how to
operationalize or measure this. Etc. etc.

Nonetheless, nobody denies that some words are used

disproportionately more often than others, and that we
use some tenses more often than others (say present
continuous over future perfect).

If you had unlimited time, you would surely want to

learn all the words in a target language, although you
would have a hard time finding a complete dictionary
on the market. You would learn all grammar rules you
could find in the literature.

However, since in our earthly existence time is a limited

resource, we need to prioritize. Which words and rules
to learn first, second, and so on. And to determine
which techniques and strategies will yield the greatest
result.

Exercise: interview native speakers and update your grammar

folder
Ask a native speaker of your target language, which
grammatical tenses he uses most often. Show him or
her the content table of a grammar book and ask him
or her to put ordinal numbers of perceived importance
to the various rules and tables.

Alternatively, do research on Wikipedia or language

forums. Also, try to find out what aspects of your target
grammar are particularly difficult, especially for native
speakers of English.

38
Update your grammar folder, arranging the material
from very important to negligible.

Make sure to include difficult topics right from the start.

Remember: “Eat that frog!” Thus, you can be sure that
you will not have any unpleasant surprises in the
future. Instead, you attack the greatest linguistic
difficulties head on. After that, everything can become
only easier.

The same goes for vocabulary. There are many word

lists with only the most frequently used 100 or 1000
words. You can find similar lists for your areas of
interest and personal expertise. For example, legal or
technological vocabulary.

Exercise: decongest your day

Make a list of three daily activities that you could either
shorten or eliminate.

During the last six months, what did I reduce or

eliminate?

39
  news consumption: from 2 hours to 10 minutes;
 listening to music: from 2 hours to 30 minutes;

I transitioned from haphazardly reading several books

at the same time to just two books: from 1 hour to 30
minutes.

If you detect more, do not stop at three.

In fact, there are many moments during a typical day

when we could be learning a language. On our
commute to university or work, we could listen to some
audio material; while waiting for the bus or metro, we
could pull out our pocket dictionary and repeat our daily
number of new words; we could close our eyes and just
think in another language.

Those of us using the Pomodoro technique or just

taking small breaks can then enjoy entertainment in
our target language.

Exercise: find time for practice

40
Recommended readings
Brian Tracy’s ”Eat that frog!”

David Allen ”Getting things done”

41
5. Your personalized language training
plan
Most of us are accustomed to planning our business
affairs. Surprisingly, I have observed many
accomplished entrepreneurs who set out in their
language learning with neither clear goals and
objectives, nor a detailed plan as to how they intend to
attain the first. They seem to throw their
entrepreneurial skills overboard as soon as they enter
a language class.

Why? Maybe, we feel - language not being our field of

competency - we need to leave planning decisions to
the teacher or the authors of a textbook; following the
advice of “outsourcing your weaknesses”.

As mentioned in the introduction, not many language

teachers take great efforts in developing the necessary
planning skills. Most rely on the textbook material, or
they follow the curriculum of the respective school or
university.

That exposes us to the risk of just following tradition

for tradition’s sake, many of the plans and material
having never been put to some kind of scientific
testing. And, if you learn a new language with a specific
purpose: the study plan and learning materials may not
be suitable for your goals. In some cases, they may
even lead you astray.

If you want to learn language XYZ with the goal of

becoming conversational, but your language class

42
focuses on reading and completing written exercises,
you are training for something different.

Many of us have passed through similar experiences.

We learn a certain language at school for many years,
pass all the necessary tests, even obtain good grades,
but in real life, we have great difficulties sustaining a
simple conversation.

Let us apply the concept of reverse engineering to our

language learning process. Start with the end in mind.
Picture yourself after having accomplished your
language goals. What are you doing? Are you sitting in
a restaurant with international friends, completing
multiple-choice grammar tests? Are they
communicating with you by writing their sentences on
a blackboard, or do they speak with subtitles projected
onto their chests? Do you present essays to each other,
text analyses, or do you just do the same as you do in
your native language: converse freely?

If your goal is to solve standardized tests until the end

of your life, go ahead with a more conventional
approach. If you want, however, to emulate what you
normally do in your native language, let us dissect a
conversation and see what ingredients we need for it.

We need to understand first what others are saying. A

typical flaw in conventional language instruction is that,
a) students have overall problems in listening
comprehension because their focus from the beginning
is on visual perception, b) students are focused on one
ideal pronunciation (that of the teacher or a model in
an audio course).

43
We furthermore need to know some basic vocabulary
and grammar (remember the 80-20 rule). In addition,
we need to have enough confidence to speak aloud.

While vocabulary and grammar are taught fairly well in

a typical language school, the students’ confidence in
speaking may vary greatly. Many develop certain
inhibitions, stemming from some kind of operant
conditioning in school. They have an internalized fear
of being interrupted, criticized and even ridiculed in
front of others.

How should we obtain and improve the above

elements?

First, we need to hold back from jumping into the next

textbook or course.

Then, we need to reason out what the best means to

develop the core skills for conversation are, and to put
them into a personalized language-training plan.

In the next chapter, there are various techniques for

that, so we continue here just with the outline for
writing your plan.

44
What should your plan include? What should it look
like?

Ingredients for your personalized language training plan:

 a sheet of paper;

 a motivating picture related to your new

language (a celebrity, touristic images, abstract
art, etc.);

 restating your SMART goals from above;

 setting an approximate time-frame for practice

each day (e.g. 6:00-6:30 a.m.);

 specifying which techniques you will practice for

how long.

You can adapt the following template.

45
Completed, it could look like this:

46
47
6.Techniques
Here are some techniques to play and experiment with.
There are many more available on the internet and in
language textbooks. However, those included here
have shown particularly good results with my students.
Some of them are actually fun to do.

In general, maintain a playful attitude while learning.

Think more of it like playing with Lego©, assembling
model airplanes or painting, than like studying hard in
a school setting.

Pick one or two techniques that you consider most

enticing, and schedule them for at least 21 days in your
personalized training plan.

6.1 Reading out loud to a metronome

A metronome is something familiar to most musicians.
Some of you may have even a physical one at home.
However, using one of the sites below works just as
well.

Set the metronome at moderate speed and read a text

in rhythm with the clicks; one syllable per click. Then,
repeat the reading, increasing the tempo each time.

This forces us to pronounce each syllable more clearly.

Especially since many of us have the habit of clipping
syllables.

This is quite a mechanical exercise. Of course, there is

nothing aesthetic in speaking to a monotonous beat.
You should not aspire to always speak in exactly the

48
same tempo. This is just for clarity and for building up
speed.

Advice

 Learn the rules in your target language as to

how you can identify where a syllable starts
and where it ends.

 Start very slowly; increase gradually to the

maximum.

 Work with a short passage and improve your

performance.

 Play with the rhythm. For example, vary the

number of syllables per click (between 1 and
3).

 Try to maintain the original stress in every

word. You need not put equal stress on each
syllable. This, in combination with the equally
loud clicks, creates an interesting rhythmic
experience. My intuition is that it would be a
useful tool for aspiring hip hoppers, too,
although I have never had anyone among my
students test it out.

Online metronomes

http://www.metronomeonline.com/

http://bestmetronome.com/

49
6.2 Reading with a finger between your lips
Put a finger between your lips; after respecting basic
hygiene, of course. Alternatively, you could use a pen
instead.

Read any text for at least five minutes. Then, read the
same passage without your finger. Compare how your
voice sounds and how you feel while speaking. Do you
sense a difference?

This forces us to pronounce more clearly because we

need to open our mouth more and work with our facial
muscles. Our voice becomes stronger.

For hundreds of years, public speakers (often, military

officers) practiced with stones or nuts in their mouth.

With a finger, it is less dangerous: at least it is more

complicated to swallow it completely.

Advice

 Select any text (from your textbook,

Wikipedia, an online blog or newspapers, even
an advertisement).

 Repeat the same fragment several times

during one session.

 Alternate segments of 2-5 minutes with and

without a finger.

50
  Record yourself with a smartphone as to get
impartial proof of your improved
pronunciation.

6.3 Karaoke/playback speaking

This technique, while highly effective in learning a
target accent, seems difficult for many students to
maintain at home as a daily practice. Maybe we feel
silly doing it, especially when someone else is around.

It consists of simply speaking along, over or as an

immediate echo to a model. This model can be
anything: a film, talk show, dialogues from your
textbook.

It is like singing along to some music. You quickly

develop an ear for being out of tune, and with time you
learn how to auto-correct.

I heard that some theater actors practice the same

method. For learning and memorizing a new role, they
speak to recorded tapes.

Advice

 Do not let yourself be discouraged at the

beginning. This is a quite difficult technique.
Do not aspire to perfect imitation right from
the start. Just start imitating sounds,
approximately. Today 1%, tomorrow 1.5%,
and so on …

 Do not try to understand everything the model

is saying. The scope of this exercise is more to

51
 develop an intuition for language melody and
the sounds of your target language.

 Always look for different material and models,

so you do not become fixated with a certain
voice.

 Vary between easy and challenging models.

 Imagine yourself surfing. At the beginning, you

will fall repeatedly, but with time, you will
remain for ever longer periods on (or under)
the wave.

 If you lose track, just continue with the next

sentence. Do not punish yourself. Just jump on
and try again.

 Many players (and YouTube) allow you to

reduce (or increase) speed. If you are learning
a language with very complicated sounds, start
by reducing speed to 50%, or even more.
Alternatively, if you are already good at 100%,
why not increase to 150% or more?

6.4 Learn a language by listening to popular music in

that language.
Many languages are quite melodic and rhythmic. By
applying the Karaoke method mentioned above, while
singing the lyrics to popular music, you can build a
sense of cadence and understand better the patterns
of pronunciation within a given language. Additionally,
you can pick up cultural notes about what is important

52
in the country where the songs were written and
produced.

I have had a number of students who developed a love

for a new language, and then went on to speak in that
language very well because they were really fond of the
music of a particular country or band.

Advice

 Be careful to choose popular music from a

particular country (for example Fado in
Portugal, or Chanson in France) in order to
avoid learning and repeating words that might
be offensive within that culture. Popular music
is usually free of obscenities.

 If you don't understand the lyrics of a song,

take some time on a number of free sites to
look up the translations. This might be another
perfect opportunity to look up the translation
in a third language (French translations of
Portuguese songs) so that you can study both
at the same time.

6.5 Thinking in a foreign language

Every act of speaking, including in our native language,
needs a preceding thought. The clearer we think, the
more correct and convincing our speech becomes.

For many of us, this cognitive process has become

automatic to such a degree that we do not perceive it
consciously anymore.

53
One reason for stage fright or fear of public speaking is
that the situation forces us to do something consciously
that we normally do habitually. In that moment, we feel
we do not know how to produce sentences and sounds
intentionally.

Apart from expert meditators and Zen masters, most

of us have a constant inner dialogue or monolog. Our
mind is a chatterbox, commenting on everything we do
and experience.

Why not channel this process into the new language?

You can save a lot of time. If you just have 10% of your
normal thought processes translated into another
language, you will get good practice.

Advice

 Begin with a few sentences only, but do it

several times during the day.

 Practice this in a safe environment, not while

driving or crossing a street.

 Elicit thoughts with generic and open questions

like these: “What do I need to do next? How
do you like XYZ? Why not …?”

 Comment on everything you hear and see

during the day.

 Imagine the sounds of the words clearly in

your head, like when having an earworm.

54
6.6 Pattern sentences
Take a correct phrase or sentence and modify it,
replacing one or more of its elements.

Most commonly heard sentences fall into a limited

number of construction patterns. Practicing to generate
a great number of sentences according to those
patterns, you lay the railroad tracks for transporting
your future speech.

Example:

Take a very simple sentence in Spanish. “Quiero”

means “I want”. Let us say you found the following
sentence in your Spanish book. Therefore, it should be
correct.

Quiero un libro.

With a dictionary at hand, or rehearsing the words you

have already learned, you generate as many sentences
as possible -- at least ten.

Quiero un coche. Quiero un helado. Quiero un

refrigerador. Quiero una casa. Quiero una bicicleta. …

The goal is to produce phrases quickly. No need for

philosophical profundity. At least, not at this stage. Fill
in any words that come to your mind, even if they make
no sense.

Then, start transforming and expanding the sentences

further. For example, by changing or adding another
element.

55
Mi padre quiere un libro. No quiero ningún libro. Quiero
un libro interesante. Quiero comprarme un libro.
Quiero comprar un libro en el mercado.

Advice

 Practice this technique first in your native

language. This way you develop a sense of
how it works. I guarantee you will become a
much quicker and more flexible speaker and
negotiator.

 Take pattern sentences from everywhere: not

only from your textbook but also from
advertisements, the news, literature, chat
rooms, etc.

6.7 Generate sentences with a dictionary

Open the dictionary and choose any word by chance.
Formulate quickly five phrases or sentences with that
word.

This helps you build up a larger active vocabulary.

While producing sentences around the word; you
process it cognitively at a deeper level than if you just
did it by rote learning. This improves retention rates.

At the same time, you reactivate other semantically

related words.

Advice

 Always carry a pocket dictionary with you.

During the day, you can find moments of down

56
 time for practice: in a traffic jam, waiting room
or at a boring meeting. Why not use those
small oases of free time?

 Practice the technique with friends: for

example, in social networks. Seeing someone
online, send him or her a word in exchange for
five sentences.

6.8 Speaking in front of a mirror

This is similar to the interior dialogue. You can also play
some standard situations while adopting different
roles: in a bank, at customs, in a travel agency, etc.

In theater, there is a tradition of one-man dramatic

recitals, and many an ancient philosopher practiced
speaking aloud while alone.

Thus, there should be no reason for not honing that

skill, too.

Advice

 Dim down the lighting a bit (or even light a

candle) to create a relaxed atmosphere.
Remember: the goal is not to check our face
for wrinkles and pimples, nor do we want to be
self critical.

 Have a conversation guide near you to practice

specific situations.

 Record yourself with your mobile phone. Store

the recordings for tracking your progress.

57
6.9 Prohibit your native language
At the age of 19, after graduating from German high
school, I made a “contract” with myself by which I
abstained from consuming literature and news in
German. This way I was obliged to use other languages
to obtain information on topics that interested me.

At university, I consulted only foreign literature. The

collateral damage of that was that during oral exams
especially, I mentally translated scientific terms in
Freudian psychoanalysis back from English to German,
not hitting the original terms.

6.10 Simultaneous interpretation – in daily life

While listening to somebody, translate what he or she
says, in your thoughts only, into another language.
This is very difficult, especially in the beginning. It is
no surprise that simultaneous translation is a well-paid
profession in many countries.

Advice

 Start this method by translating only isolated

words or phrases.

 Do not be a perfectionist. Be happy for every

word you can translate.

 Transform boring situations into something

thrilling; like long meetings or conferences you
need to attend.

58
6.11 Consecutive translation with simple sentences
 Generate sentences in your native language
and translate them into your new language.

 Do this in thought, speech or writing.

Advice

 Start with simple sentences. Later, gradually

widen your horizon.

 Practice this as a game with a friend who is

learning the same language. You could send
sentences to each other on Facebook or Skype.

6.12 Conjugate entire sentences

Exercising verb conjugation in class is a staple of
language instruction. In languages which have complex
word order issues, conjugating entire sentences is very
helpful. Like German: in subordinated clauses, the
conjugated part of the verb takes the final position.

Let us take this sentence as a starting point.

Ich kann heute ausruhen, weil ich nicht zur Arbeit

gehen muss. (Today, I can rest because I do not need
to go to work).

Conjugated (with predicates and subjects underlined):

Ich kann mich heute ausruhen, weil ich nicht zur Arbeit
gehen muss.

59
Du kannst dich heute ausruhen, weil du nicht zur Arbeit
gehen musst.

Er kann sich heute ausruhen, weil er nicht zur Arbeit

gehen muss.

Wir können uns heute ausruhen, weil wir nicht zur

Arbeit gehen müssen.

Ihr könnt euch heute ausruhen, weil ihr nicht zur Arbeit
gehen müsst.

Sie können sich heute ausruhen, weil sie nicht zur

Arbeit gehen müssen.

However, if the subordinated clause precedes the main

one, the predicate in the latter switches with the
subject to position I. Word order in the subordinated
clause remains unaffected.

Weil ich heute nicht zur Arbeit gehen muss, kann ich
heute ausruhen.

It could also be used to train other parts of the

sentences, like possessive pronouns.

I am discussing with my friends about my new book.

You are discussing with your friends about your new

book.

She is discussing with her friends about her new book.

...

60
This is a very helpful technique for stimulating sentence
production as in Chapter 6.5.

Advice

 Make a collection of proofread pattern

sentences, taken from textbooks, literature or
online publications that contain complicated
sentence structures.

 Exchange challenging pattern sentences with

your accountability partners.

 Ask your mentor or teacher about particularly

difficult word order rules in the new language
and focus on these.

6.13 Role playing

Make a list of ten to twenty real-life (or, if you want,
hypothetical) situations and practice role playing with
a friend. If you do not have anyone, play both parts or
more yourself.

Here are just some of the situations I use in classroom

settings; with a concrete negotiation task or problem
in brackets.

 at customs (your papers are not in order; you

carry strange or forbidden things with you;
customs officials want to extract a bribe from
you – happens all over the world);

61
 in a pharmacy (you try to buy something
unavailable and look for substitutes; you buy
something strange, delicate or unusual);

 with an architect (order your dream house);

 problems with a neighbor;

 at the pet shop (buying a new pet – even

exotic ones like crocodiles, deer, or snakes;
discussing the animal’s habits and preferred
fodder);

 in an airplane (duty free shopping; helping

children that are afraid to fly; handling difficult
VIP passengers – e.g. does not want to turn
his mobile phone off, starts smoking);

 with a lawyer (settling a conflict with your

employer or neighbor, a divorce or any other
legal matter);

 election campaign (knocking on doors and

trying to win over normal citizens for your
candidacy – choose also absurd political
positions, invent your fictional party like
National Vegans United);

 organizing a wedding ceremony;

 buying a car;

 being at a diplomatic reception (with a

combination of interesting countries, all with

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 specific goals and expectations; imagine a
conversation between the ambassadors of the
Fiji Islands, Liechtenstein and North Korea);

 participating in a film casting (for a comedy,

horror movie or a documentary film on Elvis
Presley, or any other celebrity).

Advice

 Prepare word and phrase lists for every

situation; you will find many such lists already
on the internet or in language guides;

 Write down key questions and affirmations;

 Practice each situation several times;

 Videotape yourself with your mobile phone or

computer and work on passages to be
improved;

 When travelling, treat each encounter in daily

life as a similar training situation.

6.14 Writing a journal

Writing a daily journal is a great way to train to express
your own thoughts in your new language. You will
automatically be forced to train exactly those words
and phrases that are most relevant to you and your
situation.

For beginners, it may be useful to start with a fixed set

of questions you answer every day.

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For morning routines:

What did I dream about last night?

What am I grateful for this day?

What is my number one goal for this day?

Who am I going to meet? What am I going to tell them?

What do I want to achieve?

For evening routines:

What did I achieve today?

What went wrong?

What would I do differently next time?

What have I learned today?

What people helped me today, and how?

What new things did I learn?

What surprised me?

You should, of course develop your own set of

questions.

Advice

 Do not force yourself to write much. Just write

something. Remember: one sentence a day is
better than no sentences.

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  Allow yourself to write in incomplete
sentences. Do not censor your grammar and
language skills at this point.

 Reread older entries periodically. Observe

whether and how things have changed: both
language-wise and in your life.

Recommended readings
John Lee Dumas’ ”Freedom Journal” and ”Mastery
Journal” already offer a journal structure you could
adapt to your language. You could also write ”morning
pages” as recommended in Julia Cameron’s ”The
Artist’s Way”. Consult also literature on stimulating
creativity to find inspiring questions and tasks; like
Claudia Azula Altucher’s ”Become an Idea Machine”.

6.15 Explaining words from your native language in a

foreign one
Explain strange, funny and trade-specific words from
your own language in the target language. This can be
a fun task with one or more friends. Comb the
dictionary of your native language for finding words
you yourself have not heard before.

Like: aubergine, brummagem, pyknic, kalian,

discomfit, prognosticate, psyche, winnow, provenance,
relegate, protract, disgorge, quaff, libation, eschew,
shoddy.

Advice

 Do this also in writing, from time to time;

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  Consult online publications and courses on how
to better explain things. You will acquire a
much-needed skill in real life, at the same
time.

 Consult an online dictionary for specific

industries; for your own or areas you are
interested in;

 Apply this also to regional, dialectical and slang

words;

 Try to explain also idiomatic expressions, like

(That’s a horse of a different color.
Burn the candle at both ends.
Take the wind out of your sails.)

Be careful not to learn words or phrases that are never

used.

6.16 Play with different tenses

Choose any sentence (one of your own, or from your
textbook), and transform it into all tenses in your
target language.

An example in Romanian:

Prezent: Mergi cu prietena ta la cinema? (Do you go

with your girl-friend to the cinema)

Perfect compus: Ai mers cu prietena ta la cinema?

Perfect simplu: Merseși cu prietena ta la cinema?

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Mai mult ca perfect: Merseseși cu prietena ta la
cinemă?

Viitor: Vei merge cu prietena ta la cinema?

Viitor anterior: Vei fi mers cu prietena ta la cinema?

These phrases will have been being used for many

years before you will have taken the time to learn
them.

Advice

 Make sure you have a conjugation table with

all tenses in your personalized grammar folder.

 Change the order of tenses you practice to

avoid rigidity.

 Especially practice tenses you have rarely used

before.

 Remember the 80-20 rule discussed earlier.

Don’t confuse yourself by learning tenses that
are seldom, if ever, used. An example would
be the future perfect continuous in English.

6.17 Speed reading

Humans are animals of habit. From a very early age we
become recognizable by our idiosyncratic habits: our
posture, how we move, breathe, and speak. Most of
our behavior is highly habitualized. A risk in language
learning is that we may develop a comfort zone for
certain aspects of our speech.

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We may stick to certain kinds of intonations, may
develop the habit of not finishing sentences (a personal
”sin” of mine) when talking. From observing students
over the years, a very strong habit is speed in
speaking. At a certain point, students choose ”their”
preferred speed in a new language. Even as they
progress, they tend to continue to speak in that speed
“comfort zone” .

How to break out of it? Karaoke speaking with fast role

models is a first solution. Use it with talk shows or
sports commentators.

Another cure is to practice reading out loud with a

stopwatch running.

Needed: a stopwatch (most probably on your

smartphone or on a website); a reasonably long
paragraph; the table below to track your progress.

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Track your ratios over a fixed period of time, say 21
days, using the table below, entering only the first and
fourth (or last) indicator for each day. If you enjoy
drawing graphs, use Excel or any statistical pages to
draw a curve highlighting your progress. If statistics is
your passion, run significance tests on your changes.

Advice

 Do this with all kinds of different texts: fiction

books, contracts, newspaper stories, scientific
articles, job descriptions, etc.

 Find websites with tongue-twisters. To leave

sufficient time to operate your stopwatch,
decide to repeat each tongue-twister a certain

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 amount. Otherwise, it will be hard to measure
speed if you say every tongue-twister once,
since you need to track milliseconds of
differences. The speed of you starting and
stopping the stopwatch may become a source
of error.

 Share your results with your accountability

partner.

 Search the web for tips on speed-reading.

There are various techniques which include
focusing on certain points in each row.

 Practice in advance words or numbers that are

particularly hard to pronounce, for example
using a metronome, where each click falls on
the main stress of the word.

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7. Useful attitudes and habits
Many business authors say success is 80% mindset or
psychology. From experience, this is a much-neglected
aspect in language learning. Many teachers do not care
much about psychology (”I am a language teacher, not
a motivational coach”). Students themselves often
become restless as soon as teachers address attitudes
towards learning. On the one hand, trying to instill a
certain mindset in students may easily be perceived as
moralizing, eliciting unpleasant memories from school.
On the other hand, few students – even those with a
business background – see any merit in working on
their attitudes and mindset. For most of us, learning a
language is a limited activity, contained in itself, that
does not necessitate any personal transformation.
Nothing could be more wrong.

Students with the right attitudes and habits often

outperform others who in the beginning show results
that are more promising.

Below, is some useful orientation in this regard.

Mindset
A general understanding that our intelligence and
ability in the area of languages (and not only) is
malleable and therefore learnable: This is what
Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck calls a
”growth mindset”.

The opposite of that would be a ”fixed mindset”. With

a fixed mindset, we think and say things like:

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  ”Everybody is born with a certain amount of
talent regarding languages.”

 ”Putting in effort into learning can change that

only to a very limited amount.”

Having a fixed vs. a growth mindset has been proven

to affect several aspects of learning. With a fixed
mindset, effort becomes an indicator that we lack
talent: ”If I need to make an effort, it means I am not
good at it”. Since people with a fixed mindset do not
believe in the possibility of substantial improvement,
they care much more about their self-image. They want
others to get the impression that they are smart, and
to avoid making a fool of themselves.

During their life, they will therefore choose tasks they

can easily and visibly excel in. They will avoid
challenging learning situations with the risk of failure.
They will try to create the impression that they do
things effortlessly. In the area of language, they may
lie about how long they really have already been
learning a certain language. I had quite a few students
who during the presentation round in the first lesson of
a new course told the group they had started just some
weeks a ago to learn German; later, it surfaced that, in
fact, they had been at it for several years.

With a fixed mindset, we avoid negative feedback that

threatens our self-image. We seek, however, for easy
compliments. We therefore put all our efforts into
becoming perfect in some limited areas, where we
most easily impress strangers. We may become great

72
in making small talk with the perfect intonation and
pronunciation, learning phrases by heart.

That is a reasonable strategy, because most

conversations with foreigners last only a few seconds
or minutes. We make sure that we ”collect” as many
kind words and encouragements as possible. ”Your
English is EXCELLENT.”

However, if we are put to a test, our knowledge has

stayed quite superficial after many years. Every
foreigner we meet compliments us on our great XYZ.
However, we cannot read books, understand talk
shows or sustain a longer conversation.

The ”fixed mindset” strategy is visible also in the choice

of learning tasks. Most of us left school having been
trained in visual learning. We are accustomed to black
and white boards, PowerPoint presentations, books and
notepads. When starting with a new language, we often
avoid audio-only exercises because we feel
”uncomfortable” with them. We say, we will do them
”later on”, as soon as we have mastered the new
language through mostly visual learning. Many
students postpone working with challenging audio
materials for many years, because they never feel they
are ready to take the ”jump”. Visual learning becomes
an easy addiction, supported also by an increasing
number of smartphone apps.

Then there are the clever ones with a fixed mindset

that cite body language experts and scientific studies

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that state that the human mind processes 90% visual
cues.

It is no coincidence that many ”audio-oriented” crafts

seem to disappear from children’s upbringing (like
music education, which itself has become infected with
visual orientation first).

The fact remains that humans (except for the hearing

impaired) communicate using sounds. So we need to
orient our language training toward listening and
speaking, whether we find that difficult at the
beginning or not.

Setbacks and criticism leads to different reactions in

students with a growth or fixed mindset. The latter will
tend to drop out early on. They will try to diffuse
negative feedback, finding excuses and blaming others
or “a lack of time”.

Students with a growth mindset will take setbacks as a

challenge. They are thrilled to learn something new.

Other useful attitudes and habits

A tolerant striving for perfection: combination between
patience and tolerance for one’s own mistakes, and
ambition for continuous self-improvement.

Many students abort their language efforts by being

overly critical and self-sabotaging of their mistakes. If
newborns come to life with a similar toxic
perfectionism, nobody would ever learn to speak, since
our first years are nothing but making mistakes and
discovering our own language through trial and error.

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Respect and acceptance for dialects and different
accents: in real life, only a few people speak the clean,
“standard” language.

Some students, especially from very centralized and

nationalistic cultures project their own worldview upon
the new language. They may show this by disregarding
people who do not speak “Oxford English” and avoiding
material that is not in the “standard” variant.

Cultivate a joy of learning, without immediate

reinforcement.

Try to link your language to interests and activities that

are intrinsically enjoyable. You do not want to become
dependent on a teacher or mentor who tells you until
the end of your life how great you are. My suspicion is
that some people enroll exactly for that reason to
regular language classes in advanced levels (especially
with foreign teachers).

Develop the capacity to delay gratification.

Since thorough fluency takes years, make sure to plan

for milestones along the way, where you can celebrate
your small successes: your first 5-minute conversation
with a stranger, your first newspaper article, your first
e-mail, etc.

Become more of an attentive listener. Build a desire to

understand others.

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Many of us want to just speak for ourselves. When we
find a native speaker, we typically erupt into long
monologues, to show how well we speak.

Maintain a critical attitude of authorities: there is no

dictionary or textbook without errors.

Make it a routine to double-check important grammar

rules and tables.

Recommended readings
I recommend you complement this small book with
deeper readings in the area of mindset.

Carol Dweck’s ”Mindset” gives you more insights into

the difference between a growth and a fixed mindset.
If you received public schooling, the chances are high
you developed a fixed mindset in various areas. As long
as you do not resolve this issue, long-lasting progress
in languages is unrealistic.

Jeff Olson’s ”The Slight Edge” or Darren Hardy’s ”The

Compound Effect” are excellent primers on the merits
of step-by-step improvements.

Charles Duhigg’s ”The Power of Habit” details research

on changing habits. Since most of the success in
language development depends on establishing good
learning habits, and of replacing unproductive ones,
behavior modification is an important research area for
you.

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8. How to overcome fear, self-sabotage
and other obstacles
It is not the goal of this chapter to replace the
specialized publications on psychotherapy and self-
help. If you suffer from any kind of psychological
distress, like social phobia, I highly recommend
consulting the respective literature and/or a specialist.

In particular, Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) has

lots of methods that are easily adaptable to blocks in
language learning.

Visualizations
Develop a clear picture and sensation of how you feel
when you freely speak in a foreign language. Write
detailed scenarios of various situations you have
mastered because of your newly-acquired skills.

Maybe you already have a meditative practice using

visualizations.

Affirmations
There are a lot of books on using affirmations, the most
famous of which are probably those of Louise Hay. Why
not formulate some related to language learning?

”I speak in XYZ effortlessly and with ease”

”Learning XYZ fills me with calmness and joy”

”I have more than enough energy to learn XYZ”

77
This is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea. However, if
you already use affirmations otherwise, it should be
natural to extend them to this area, too. Some say that
the best time to work with them is both before falling
asleep and after waking up in the morning. You could
write them into your calendar, pin them next to the
bathroom mirror, print them on small cards or use a
smartphone app to regularly remind you of them.

Overcoming fears
Imagine you are afraid of hearing your own voice
recorded. You could make a list of ten actions leading
up to that, order them according to the intensity of your
fear and then proceed practicing each stage 7-10 days.

It could look this this.

I. Imagine recording your voice (5 minutes with

closed eyes, with relaxation before and after)

II. Speaking (freely or reading a text) with music

in the background

III. Speaking with music in the background –

imagine you are being recorded.

IV. Speaking without music – imagine you are being

recorded.

V. Record yourself with a voice recorder – don’t

listen to the recordings, delete them
immediately afterwards.

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 VI. Record yourself with a voice recorder, have loud
music in the background – listen to the
recording with low volume so that you can
barely hear anything.

VII. Record yourself with a voice recorder, have soft

music in the background – listen to the
recording with low volume so that you can
barely hear anything.

VIII. Record yourself with a voice recorder, have soft

music in the background – listen to the
recording with normal volume.

IX. Record yourself without music – listen to the

recording with low volume.

X. Record yourself without music – listen to the

recording with normal volume.

Gratitude
Make it a habit to show gratitude each day for all that
is made available to you through your language
learning.

 Free online resources like dictionaries,

Wikipedia in different languages, podcasts,
Youtube, etc.;

 Your accountability partner, mentor, teacher

and all significant others that support you on
your journey;

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  Travelling to other countries: all the people
willing to interact with you, showing patience
and helpfulness.

And, if you are religious, the Creator for your

intellectual, spiritual and physical preparedness for
learning a language.

80
9. Measuring your progress
If you are in a conventional classroom setting, there is
plenty of feedback. You have to pass tests, and you can
measure your progress based on the grades you
receive.

How to measure yourself in the absence of a teacher?

First, let us become a bit more skeptical of common

language tests. With IQ tests, there is the saying:
intelligence is what an IQ test measures. Similarly,
your “language proficiency” is typically considered how
well you perform with test questions. If the test is
skewed towards writing, your great conversation skills
will not enter the final score.

The best test is how effectively and efficiently you act

in a real-life situation: how well others understand you,
and how convincing you are.

Here are some ideas on how to measure your progress

objectively.

Vocabulary
If you are learning vocabulary from a certain textbook,
structured into chapters, you can track the percentage
of retention over time for the vocabulary of each
chapter.

Example:

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Vocabulary from Chapter XX:

Take a text sample in certain intervals of days from the

same source (e.g. an online newspaper) and underline
all the words you know. Copy the text into Word and
use word count. Then, calculate the percentage of
words correctly retrieved.

82
Writing
Using spellcheck options in Word, or your E-Mail
provider, you can calculate or track the number of
mistakes. You could break down the latter according to
types of errors.

You can monitor how many words you can produce in

a certain time interval, while accounting for number of
errors.

Listening
While watching videos or listening to audio material,
make estimations of the percentage you understand.
Using VLC Player or others, modify the speed and track
up to the level in which you can still understand the
audio material.

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Speaking
Using the Karaoke technique described in chapter 6,
you could measure the speed up to which you can
speak along with a model; using VCL player or a similar
option on Youtube.

External feedback
At certain intervals, ask your accountability partner,
your mentor or teacher, or an available native speaker
to give you feedback on your speech.

Insist on specific information. If they say you speak

excellently, ask what exactly you do well. If they
criticize your accent, ask what sounds are most
problematic.

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10. Typical questions, and answers
From which moment should I start to speak the new language?
From lesson one. Do not let perfectionism interfere with
your learning. Remember when you were a child? Your
sentences were far from perfect. But by having a long
training phase, you shaped your speech close to
perfection.

One teacher told me he starts asking students to

formulate sentences only in the second level. Why?
Probably, not to burden new students and create
frustration. On the other hand, the more you postpone
actually practicing communication in a language, the
more stress you create.

A student who starts playing around with sentences

during the first lessons will experience hardships.
However, he will not have the same high expectations
as a student who has already had some courses. The
more we wait, the more we tend to self-sabotage. Our
“Inner Censor” will send us messages like “You are
already two years into language XYZ, and you still
cannot speak in correct sentences. You are really a
talentless loser!”

Do I need a teacher?
I definitively suggest finding a person who knows this
language well and who could mentor you. This does not
necessarily need to be a formal language course.

However, for most of us it makes sense to take one or

two introductory courses and then continue on our

85
own. A group setting at the beginning with reciprocal
support may give us an important impetus as well as
the opportunity to make contacts with potential
accountability partners.

Are native speakers preferable as language teacher?

Many students prefer a native teacher. However, from
my own very unsuccessful first experiences as a
teacher and from comparing students coming from
native vs. non-native teachers I must conclude that in
many cases, non-native teachers may even be
superior.

 They tend to teach language in a more

systematic way;

 They tend to have a more solid preparation for

explaining grammar;

 They have first-hand experience of learning the

language as a foreigner;

 They may check the correctness of translations,

as they also know the student’s native
language.

On the negative side, many native speakers as

teachers

 do not have any formal training in education;

 have not systematically studied their own

language;

86
  tend to rely on their advantage/attractiveness
as native speakers, and neglect investing in
continuously honing their teaching skills;

 are not able to verify whether the students

exactly understood the meaning of vocabulary
(if they do not know the student’s language).

Yes, many words can be easily explained through

images or other words. However, explaining different
nuances of synonyms, of abstract or very specific
words is often more complicated than initially thought;
especially at beginners’ levels. Think of how you would
explain the following words to an English beginner:
superfluous, redundant, exuberant, pompous, enticing,
cinnamon, defiance.

In any case, much lesson time will be lost in

complicated efforts of explanation.

On the other hand, especially at advanced levels,

native speakers are more likely to know the right
context for certain words. They can also coach you
more reliably, how to express yourself in specific
situations.

How long should I learn every day?

If you do not have an impending deadline for fluency,
start it very slowly. Begin with 5 to 10 minutes every
day, with your personalized training plan. Add some
more minutes just for listening. Make sure you comply
with your daily routine and that you feel comfortable
with it. Only then, start to gradually increase your time.

87
Remember Parkinson’s Law which states that tasks
tend to extend to the time allotted to them. From my
own experience, one can reach quite far with a daily
practice of less than 30 minutes.

Sometimes it is good to set yourself a maximum

amount of training time. That way, you already build
up expectations and energy for continuing tomorrow.

What about ”become fluent quick” schemes?

The internet is full of ”become fluent quick” offers.
Polyglots promise to help you become conversational
with their new techniques. My impression is that many
of them are quite effective for exactly that first stage
of language learning. To overcome fears of making
mistakes, to cram into our memory a minimum number
of words and phrases for survival. However, I am not
so sure in what regard they allow for long-term
sustained learning.

In particular, there are methods working with hypnosis

or ”suggestions”, like the ”suggestopedia” of Bulgarian
psychotherapist Georgi Lozanov that promises to help
you memorize up to thousands of new words per day.

I have never tried it to create an opinion on its

effectiveness.

What I am convinced of is that there are no shortcuts

of learning a language thoroughly without putting in
the necessary effort.

But that is exactly what many language learners hope

for. That somewhere, a former KGB or CIA agent sells

88
online his tricks how to just ”upload” into our brain a
new language.

If that were really possible, the rich and famous of this

world would have ”downloaded” long ago a great
number of languages so they can publicly brag about
their language skills. However, I am not aware of a
”polyglot epidemic” that has broken out among global
politicians and celebrities.

What is the best way to memorize new words?

For centuries, the recipe for that was rote-learning.
Simply by repetition. This method is nowadays looked
upon with disdain by education professionals. There are
so many techniques promoted at schools and online.

 Flash cards (for example, Anki);

 Imagining rooms of your house with new words

”pinned” to certain parts and objects;

These are just two prominent ones. I personally was

never into that because it took too much time to
prepare cards, or it seemed too artificial.

Apart from some exceptions, where I wanted to reach

a critical number of new words in a language that had
little in common with the previously learned ones (in
my case Arabic), I never made a conscious effort to
learn new words.

I just try to use the language in my daily life (thinking,

writing, listening and speaking) and integrating the
necessary words into my practice.

89
When specifically learning new words I keep it simple.
I make the first intake by rote-learning, e.g. learning
five new Arabic words by repetition. Then I build some
sentences around those words, not necessarily with all
the words in one sentence (which is another popular
technique). During the day, I will retest the words and
make some more sentences.

In any case, research into human memory shows that

your retrieval is better the more you do deep mental
operations with the new material.

It is like the difference between learning a city map

sitting in front of Google maps and actually walking or
driving through the city.

In language learning, the easiest way to process new

vocabulary is to build sentences with new words. Make
sure you do it using various channels: in thought, in
writing and speaking out loud. In such a way, you will
have more-dimensional representations of each word.

Create semantic networks with related words. While

memorizing, for example, the words ”birch”, ”lark” and
”poplar” you could explore all the other names for
trees, plants and nature-related phenomena you know.
If you have time, feel free to map those networks out
on paper or use one of the various freely available
programs for ”idea mapping”. Otherwise, just think
about all associated words. Establish a cutoff number
of words up to which you are satisfied. You could
gradually increase that indicator.

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Create as many connections to other languages you
already know. Try to find empty spaces, that is objects
or phenomena you know only in one language. Just
look around your kitchen, office or supermarket, and
make a list of objects you cannot even name in your
native language.

Make it a routine to look up one such word each day in

all the languages you want to know. Store them in a
word document. Step-by-step, you will have your own
multilingual dictionary, tailored to your own life and
needs.

What kind of books and films should I peruse?

It very much depends on the language you learn. If the
latter is somehow related to your native language, I
would suggest starting with more offical materials, like
the news or journal articles, since many more
”international” terms are used in these than in
belletristic texts. Children’s books can be especially
difficult, since they rely on older and more ”folkloric”
words than texts for adults.

In general, stick to the rule of linking your language to

your hobbies and interests. I personally started reading
Agatha Christie and Brian Tracy books, as well as
economics textbooks in general, because a) I am
already more or less familiar with the content and b) I
am highly motivated to read it.

Forcing yourself to read texts in a foreign language

which you would never have read in your native
language is, on the other hand, a real ordeal.

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How should I teach language to my own children?
During my classes, I have worked with only children
older than 12 years. However, many of the techniques
from chapter 6 coincide with a child’s mindset. Children
like to play with construction sets like Lego,
disassembling and reassembling objects, creating
dialogues between puppets and teddybears, and role
playing.

The best recipe for helping your children to master a

new language is to have a parent that acts as a role
model. If children observe their parents as they are
enthused in their own learning, they tend to imitate
them.

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11. How to use the GO Method to get
more out of your current language lessons
The GO Method is a great way to add value to language
lessons you may already be taking.

To get maximum results out of your current lessons

and the GO Method, try to intertwine them as much as
possible.

You could

 learn and rehearse vocabulary from your

textbook using techniques described above;

 practice texts given by your teacher using

karaoke speaking and reading to a metronome;

 rehearse typical communication situations used

in classroom settings by practicing in front of a
mirror and recording your voice with your
smartphone;

 include in your personalized training plan the

expected outputs for your class;

 find an accountability partner in your group;

 come prepared to each lesson with a list of

questions you could not resolve alone;

 ask your teacher to recommend additional

reading and audio material;

93
  use the classroom setting for communication
(as much as possible).

Remember: many teachers are employees in their

school and universities. By default, they may follow the
“party line” of teaching. However, most teachers
appreciate it if you communicate your expectations for
the course clearly and share what you really enjoy
doing during lessons. Not every teacher is happy with
the conventional classroom setting, so some may really
go along with constructive suggestions.

If you encounter problems in the classroom, or your

teacher doesn’t understand, try to extract,
nonetheless, as much value as possible from your
lessons. In any case, the main predictor for your
success is what you do at home. Do not let poor
teaching become an excuse for sloppy performance.

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12. How to improve your teaching with
the GO Method
Here are some thoughts on how to improve your
teaching within the framework of the GO Method.

What is your goal as a teacher? If the student’s goal is

to become conversational, every minute of the lesson
should be used as training for the desired state.

What does conversing in a language mean? It consists

of decoding others’ speech and of producing phrases
and sentences. Therefore, the output of your teaching
effort should be increased quantity and quality of
sentences decoded, and of sentences produced.

How should we align our teaching to that goal? First, to

clearly define which tasks can only or best be attained
in your presence and what can be done independently
by the student; or by an autonomous study group of
students.

In the past, hearing the teacher’s voice, especially if he

was a native speaker, was often the only chance for the
student to hear a model of pronunciation. Tapes, mp3
and online material open up literally unlimited
possibilities to do that. Therefore, the teacher should
reduce his speaking to fit the role of a trainer or
moderator and abstain from lengthy monologues.

The goal is that during lessons the students speak as

much and the teacher as little as possible. Imagine
sports lessons where the trainer is doing the entire job

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while the team is standing on the sideline watching. Not
the best idea, or?

Better imagine your classes like sports lessons where

the teacher coaches his or her students, gently shaping
their speech.

Ideally, you will split your group in pairs or small

groups of students. This way the activity level of the
group is maximized.

As a teacher, you intervene here and there, respond to

questions and keep the groups working. Like an
experienced host at a cocktail party who makes sure
that the conversation keeps flowing smoothly in the
whole room.

Typically, students will try to push you back to a

conventional situation, where the teacher confronts the
whole group and interaction takes place in turns
between one student and the teacher, while the other
students are waiting.

It is a ”comfortable” situation for many students,

because they have long periods of inactivity and they
can keep the teacher talking and ”doing the work”.

Then there are some students with a personality that

monopolizes attention. A lesson can easily derail as
they talk to the teacher while the rest roll their eyes in
boredom. Such students will often try to resist a format
in small groups, speaking louder so they cannot be
talked over.

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Every teacher has his or her style, but I highly
recommend developing a habit of experimenting during
the lessons, with

 The order in which you do regular exercises;

 The length of each exercise;

 The proportion of the teacher vs. the students

speaking;

 The proportion of small group work vs. talking

to the whole group.

Advice

 Start with warm-up techniques, like karaoke

speaking, followed by conjugating verbs, and
building sentences.

 Let the whole group go through some exercises,

speaking as a choir, then break them up in small
groups.

Motivation and motivating, giving feedback

The best way to motivate your students is by leading
through example. As long as you yourself are
passionate about learning and improving a language,
even if it is only your native one, you will serve as a
good role model. Practice what you preach.

Research in psychology has shown the following to be

key ingredients to success:

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 Showing unconditional positive regard for your
students (which does NOT mean you approve
of their every behavior in and outside the
classroom).

 Having high expectations of your students, see

potential for big improvement in every one of
them.

 Give regular, respectful feedback that is

solution-oriented.

 Never praise students for their intelligence or

abilities (”You are smart”), but for their
preparation at home and their effort in class.

 Prepare your students right from the start for

obstacles. Contrast the achievability of positive
outcomes with probable blocks on the way.
Everyone experiences difficulties and
stagnation at some stage. So being overly
optimistic and “positive” at the beginning may
set your students up for frustration and
dropping out of language learning entirely .

 Tell stories of advanced students and their

successes and problems, thus communicating
a realistic picture.

 Make sure students develop an intrinsic

motivation by being in a “flow” state of mind
during exercises. Avoid having them become
dependent on your positive reinforcement
through attention and praise. Remember, you

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 are preparing them for life where they should
be able to move forward without someone
motivating them directly.

 Give praise at unpredictable intervals.

Otherwise, it loses its value and becomes just
a part of the routine.

 Teach yourself psychology and motivation.

Classroom discipline
Problems with classroom discipline can stem from a
variety of sources. We can endlessly complain about
modern civilization: about smartphones, ADHD, sugar
consumption, disco music, etc. Nonetheless, lack of
discipline is often a corollary for a lack of meaning and
engagement during lessons.

Breaking the group up in small teams, helps neutralize

the worst ”offenders”. You may experiment with how
to assign students to different teams and find an
optimal distribution that maximizes discipline and
engagement.

Also, make sure you talk as little as possible. Instead

of ”explaining” different grammar rules, take your
students through conjugating complete sentences in a
choir.

Your students need to be active and engage most of

the time, and not the other way around.

That may be very difficult for a teacher. It can be an

ego thing. We like to hear our own voice. Or we feel

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that it is our duty to explain much, that we are paid for
talking as much as possible.

In reality, we are paid for providing a productive

learning experience. We should therefore try
everything to maximize learning. Most often, the
teacher simply stands in the way.

Textbooks
Many teachers operate within a school, and therefore
do not have a free choice in selecting textbooks. I
always felt that the respective textbook created more
problems during lessons than it solved. Especially,
because many modern textbooks include detailed
scripts accounting for almost every minute of the
lesson. Therefore, they leave little room for changing
the order of discussing grammar or for using other
methods. Of course, most schools encourage their
teachers to pepper their lessons with “fun stuff” like
showing hilarious videos, singing songs or playing
games. However, the main part of the lesson is set for
following the textbook’s guidelines.

The shift came, when I relegated work with the book to

homework. During lessons we used other techniques
(as those in chapter 6), however, training for the same
outcomes as requested in the textbook. As a result,
students training this way often surpassed those of
other groups that were occupied in the classroom with
the book 100%, singing all the songs in it and doing
different “games”. This means that a specific textbook
is not the only (and best) way to reach some standard
outcomes.

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Not all students are equally happy with the school’s
textbook of choice. Be ready to recommend
alternatives for the homework part.

I found textbooks designed for self-study particularly

useful, because they are usually better structured and
contain more exercises. Books designed for schools are
typically more chaotic and full of group exercises that
a teacher has to explain and enforce.

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13. Wrapping it up – establishing a regular
review process
By now you will have

 Faced commonly held myths and

misconceptions on language learning;

 Clarified your motivation as to why you want

to learn language XYZ;

 Established SMART goals for your language

learning;

 Arranged for the necessary time for your daily

routine;

 Written down a self-binding personalized

language training plan;

 Linked your personal hobbies and interests to

your new language;

 Integrated several techniques into your daily

training;

 Created your personalized grammar folder;

 Found an accountability partner with whom

you share your training plan and check with
regularly;

 Found real or virtual mentors and trainers;

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  Accumulated a personalized collection of
valuable resources like dictionaries,
newspapers, magazines, link collections;

 Put a system in place to track your progress

at certain intervals: your vocabulary, speaking,
listening and writing.

What comes next?

To ensure long-lasting improvement, schedule reviews
at regular intervals for the key elements of the GO
Method.

Check each month, 3 and 6 months whether you are

making sufficient progress.

Check whether or not to update or change your

 Personalized language training plan;

 Accountability partner;

 Mentor and/or trainer;

 Indicators for tracking your progress.

Develop your own techniques that are best suitable for

your goals.

Help others and give something back

At the moment when you feel you have sufficiently
mastered your new language, share your knowledge
and experience with others. You could volunteer to
become a mentor to somebody around you. Also, do
not limit yourself to learning foreign languages only.

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Everything in the GO Method is perfectly suitable to
improving language skills in one’s own language.
Everyone of us struggles with language issues, be it for
job interviews, public speaking, or relationship
conflicts.

Identify people who could profit from this method.

Maybe they are socially anxious or overly shy. Much of
this may stem from a perceived incompetence in
controlling and improving the language part of social
interactions.

Maybe you know someone who is preparing for exams

or has stage fright.

And remember, learning deepens much more from the

moment you yourself start teaching a new skill.

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Useful links
www.wikipedia.org

The virtual encyclopedia offers almost limitless

possibilities for language learners. Apart from the
articles, there are plenty of links to other resources.
When I started, pre-Internet, searching for interesting
texts in foreign languages was always challenging. This
is no longer the case.

www.youtube.org

Search for channels with courses, documentaries, etc.

Translate some key words with Google Translate, and
off you go.

www.onlinenewspapers.com

Free access to hundreds of online newspapers, ordered

by country.

www.wwitv.com

Free access to over a thousand TV stations, ordered by

country.

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Recommended readings
Everything by Brian Tracy: Although not specifically
targeted at language learning, I admire Brian’s
condensed and no-fluff writing style. Every paragraph
is highly “actionable”.

“Mindset” by Carol Dweck. When studying

psychology, I discovered her work on implicit theories
of intelligence and drew from it for my master’s thesis
(on blocked lay musicians). She challenges many
popular beliefs, and I encountered many teaching
professionals reacting angrily when presented with her
research on how praising children for intelligence and
ability may sabotage their learning

“The Way of the Artist” by Julia Cameron was my

personal entry to self-development. The morning pages
became a companion for many years, before switching
to

“The Freedom Journal” by John Lee Dumas; why not

make a new language your 100-day goal?

“The Slight Edge” by Jeff Olson and “The Compound

Effect” by Darren Harding make for good support in
developing the right mindset of incremental,
compounded improvement.

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About us
Gerhard Ohrband

Born in 1979 in Hamburg, Germany, from a German

father and a Chilean mother; M.A. in psychology from
the University of Hamburg; since 2006 in the Republic
of Moldova. Married.

University lecturer, translator, newspaper editorialist,

language coach; speaks 21 languages – mostly self-
taught.

Interests: classical music; Austrian school of

economics; freedom.

Tim Schneider

Born in 1965 in the US, Tim has an M.A. in English from

the University of Kansas and has taught both children
and adults through literacy programs and direct English
classes over the last thirty years. He is also an author
of bilingual children’s books and manuals for the
English language in the Republic of Moldova in Eastern
Europe.

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Contacts and services
I help your company set up a system of continuous
language improvement, even if your employees have
little time and feel blocked.

 Programs for companies;

 International keynote speeches;

 Individual and group coaching online.

Send us an e-mail: [email protected]

Our homepage: https://thegomethod.org/

Our online courses: https://gerhards-

school.thinkific.com/

Our Youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3n5LCxW8N3uP
atViww-Okw/

Our podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-psychology-of-

learning-foreign-languages/

Our blog: https://thegomethod.blogspot.com/

Our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/theGOMethod/

On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerhard-
j%C3%B6rg-ohrband-22525147/

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