Jeff Martin - How to Really Learn a Language

Imagine that you arrive late to a magic show. All the seats are taken, but youve already paid your entry fee. The theater staff offers you a chance to watch from a seat backstage and refunds your money. You gladly accept, take your seat, and start watching the magician perform a card trick. At one point during the trick, you observe a subtle hand movement made by the magician that everyone else in the audience would be unable to see. You realize he has cards up his sleeve, yet everyone else perceives his trick as magic. Several different sleight of hand tricks occur in this manner, and you happen to see the hidden movements of each trick, revealing the secrets behind them all. You are the only person in the room with this visual advantage
After the show, the magician gives a question and answer forum for the audience. Most questions have to do with the way certain tricks were performed. Instead of answering, the magician asks the audience if anyone can figure out the answers. You just happen to know how he performed every trick, so you speak up to reveal the magicians secrets. After the show, several people approach you astonished at your ability and gift of discernment and deduction. They have no idea that you arent gifted at all. You simply saw the show from a different perspective.
People often accuse me of having a gift for languages. Im just trying to invite them back stage. I guess I should introduce myself, then. My name is Jeff Martin. I am a Master Certified Spanish Court Interpreter. I currently have no college degree. I have never lived in a Spanish-speaking country nor household. I, like many of you, took Spanish for a few semesters in high school, but was still unable to speak and understand the spoken language. Despite all of this, I was somehow able to pass one of the most difficult language tests in existence to become a Master Certified Court Interpreter.
I first began to really learn foreign languages at the age of 17. A few months after graduating high school, I went on a youth mission trip to Brazil. After just three days of being in Brazil, I found myself being able to hold basic conversations in Portuguese. After our two-week trip, we returned to the U.S., and I immediately looked for Brazilians to practice with. I became friends with several native Brazilians in my local community, stayed in constant contact with my friends in Brazil, and quickly progressed in Portuguese.
Later that year, I started my first full time job working at a turkey plant. The first thing I noticed was the massive amount of migrant Hispanic workers. At first, I had no desire to learn Spanish, but after my one-week orientation, I was introduced to one of my supervisors. During a conversation with him, we were interrupted by one of the Hispanic workers, and I witnessed my boss speak what seemed to be fluent Spanish with ease! Amazed, I asked him where he had learned it. He replied that he just picked it up at the plant by speaking with the workers and had become fluent in seven months!
It was at that point that I made a goal to test my abilities and become fluent in less time than he had. After three months, I had become fluent enough that many supervisors would ask me to interpret for their staff meetings. While working there, I was exposed to other languages as well. From other migrant workers I learned the basics in Chinese, Korean, and a Mayan dialect called Mam. Thirteen months after I started my first full time job as a factory worker, I left in order to pursue a career more related to my newfound passion for languages. Since that time, I have had experience in approximately 15 languages.

People ask me all the time how to learn a language. In the past, I would simply tell them the names of some language courses that I like. Very few of the people who have asked me for advice in the past ever reached fluency, which is what led me to write this book.
When I first began learning foreign languages, people told me I had a gift. I believed that to be true for a long time until I met a guy who ended up becoming one of my best friends. I first met Derek Miller while I was working as a guitar salesman at Musicians Toy Store, in Jacksonville, NC. By that point, I had already become fluent in English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and had learned the basics in French, German, Swiss German, Mandarin, Hebrew, and had dabbled in several other languages. So, it was easy for me to believe that I had a gift, especially since I hadnt met anyone else who could do what I do.
Since Derek was immediately impressed with my language abilities he, like most people I met, asked me how I did it. I honestly never really knew how to answer that question, so I simply recommended a particular language course that I had recently stumbled across. The course that I recommended to Derek was an all audio course that I had used before my first trip to Europe in 2003. I recommended it to everyone that ever asked me about languages. Not a single person who I had recommended the course to became fluent, which always baffled me. It was easiest to assume that everyone was right about me having a gift for languages.
The following year, after I had begun working as an interpreter, Derek called me out of the blue and asked me for the name of that course I had recommend to him. He said he wanted to learn Spanish. I gladly gave him the information and a few tips on how to use the course. A few weeks later, Derek and I were having phone conversations in Spanish! While he was going through the course, and obviously afterwards, he spent lots of time with native speakers and became really fluent. A few months after our first Spanish conversation, he landed a position as a medical interpreter for a local clinic! That was when something in me shifted. If Derek could do it, and I could do it, couldnt anyone?
Thus began the long process of pondering and analysis. I decided to start giving Spanish lessons to my coworkers to see if I could discover how people learn foreign languages. The problem was that not one person had success in my class. It wasnt until years later that I realized I had set them up for failure by teaching them the Spanish alphabet on day one. In retrospect I believe that each one of them would be super fluent in Spanish or any other language by now if they had only been given the information youre reading in this book. It wasnt until my wife and I had children that I finally began to understand how people learn languages. The process became quite obvious to me while going through the experience of teaching our first daughter how to speak. I feel bad for my first language students. Right now, they are probably a lot like you: led to believe that some people have it and most dont.