Benny Lewis - The No-Nonsense Guide to Language Learning: Hacks and Tips to Learn a Language Faster

The No-Nonsense Guide to Language Learning

Hacks and Tips to Learn a Language Faster

Benny Lewis

Copyright 2017 by Benny Lewis.

All rights reserved.

www.Fluentin3Months.com

No part of this ebook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without explicit written permission from Benny Lewis.

Excerpts may be used for the purposes of review.

This ebook makes no guarantees of success or implied promises. The strategies detailed in these pages will work, but are dependent on the work ethic and diligence of the language learner.

Produced in the United States of America.

First Edition.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Is It Possible to Become Fluent in a Language in 3 Months?

Im Benny Lewis, a fun-loving Irish guy, full-time globe trotter and international bestselling author.

Since 2003, Ive become a fluent speaker of seven languages. And Im able to have confident conversations in many others.

With my no-nonsense approach to language learning, I help people just like you to feel confident in speaking another language, even if theyve only just started. My mission in life is giving people permission to make mistakes . The more mistakes you make, the faster you become a confident language learner.

Thousands of language learners have been successful with my approach, and Id like to share it with you, too.

Over the years I have picked up quite a lot of short-cuts, memory techniques , and a pretty good mentality that has hugely helped me to learn seven languages, and earn the title of polyglot.

I insist that learning a language is something that anyone can do. I am not naturally linguistically talented (or at least, no more so than your average Joe); I had very poor grades for languages in school (and studied Electronic Engineering at university) and I only started speaking non-English languages at 21. Nevertheless, I have definitely learned that its a lot easier than most people think.

Once I found out how easy it is to learn languages, I started travelling to new countries and staying there (for around 3 months usually) and immersing myself in the language. Three months isnt a long time, so it forced me, through trial and error, to look for as many different ways to speed up my learning as possible. Thats how I discovered hacks for learning languages quickly.

The language hacks I discovered can just as easily be used in the comfort of your own home no matter where you call home with the right tools and attitude.

Whats my understanding of fluency? I call myself fluent when Im able to have comfortable conversations with locals about a wide range of topics without a strong accent. I expect myself to have a good enough command of the language for expressing myself clearly in many social situations, while understanding as much as possible of what other people are saying. Well get into what fluency means at a deeper level soon enough though.

I reached this level of fluency without having my head in books for months, or paying huge fees for courses. Most importantly, I have a lot of fun along the way.

I know that my techniques work for any language, because Ive used them so many times, and I get hundreds of emails, tweets, hashtagged YouTube videos and other messages every week from people who have applied my advice to their own language learning projects.

If youd like to see how its done, read on. Id like to start by sharing my language-learning story.

Before we begin, a couple of quick pointers to help you get the most from this book.

First, this book is a collection of some of my best articles on learning a language. Ive updated them, improved them and rewritten them to flow naturally from one idea to the next, so you can gradually learn my approach. Sometimes youll find that I repeat a point I made previously. Hopefully this will embed the most important ideas into your memory and help the language hackers mindset become part of your life.

Second, throughout this book I mention different language learning resources, such as italki, my Speak in a Week course, Innovative Language podcasts, and the Add1Challenge. Im certain youll find these helpful on your own language learning journey. You can find out more about these resources including the links you need to access them in the at the end of the book.

Lets get started!

Chapter 1: Why My Destiny Was to Never Speak Spanish (and How I Did it Anyway)

Its easy to look at someone who already speaks a second language and just think that it comes naturally to them.

If youve seen me speaking fluent Spanish with my friends, you might think that speaking Spanish was just my destiny . You might believe that Im naturally talented with languages and the pieces of the puzzle just always fit together to make sure that my life would go in this direction.

Utter nonsense!

In fact my destiny was to never speak Spanish. The universe told me in very clear ways, many times, that it just was not my path. My stars were aligned, my luck was forged and the fates had decided that Id be good at mathematics and computers, but not languages.

If you think Im exaggerating, please read on. The destiny excuse comes in many forms: its just not meant to be, its genetic, no matter how hard I try, Ill never be able to do it.

None of those excuses needs to be true for you.

How can I be sure of this?

I want to share with you some of the signs that the universe was giving me for many many years.

Its important to share this because I know many of you have your own struggles and it can actually be demotivating to think that some people have it easy. Trust me, I did not have it easy.

Not the best start: Speech therapy

I dont smoke, I eat healthily and I dont drink. A big reason behind these decisions is that I spent the first years of my life very sick and was admitted to hospital for some time. Now that Im in good health I dont want to squander it.

One unfortunate consequence of my health problems was that I developed a difficulty speaking.

It was so bad that I needed speech therapy I had particular problems with my R (not the rolling one, just the standard English one). My big brother still teases me that my favourite TV show was Stah Twek.

The consequences of this still linger somewhat since I learned to speak a little slower and had to get private lessons to do it (which were obviously tailored towards speaking as correctly as possible), my English was not as natural as it was for others around me so I dont have a very strong accent of where Im from. People never guess that Im from the part of Ireland I am from (Cavan), and foreigners tell me that I speak English in a way thats easy for them to understand.

Having a delay in starting to speak English well was not a good prerequisite for speaking other languages!

When Im speaking English, I still have to think a bit more than most people would. And speaking still doesnt feel that natural. So no, Im not talented with languages .

I gave up trying in my teens

Even though my interest in languages really took off in my early 20s, I was actually genuinely curious about speaking Spanish in my teens! A group of students from the Canary Islands came to spend July in my town several years in a row and I got really friendly with them. They loved me my English was the easiest to understand in town without me even trying!

But, as many people do when abroad with those from their homeland, they spoke a lot of their mother tongue with one another. I tried to ask what something meant, and even printed out the La Macarena lyrics to speak it aloud to them. But they were having none of it! They had travelled a long way and their parents had paid quite a lot to have them immersed in English, so theyd at least do that with the locals all the time. My purpose among them socially was made clear and any attempt to learn a word or two of Spanish was met with dont be silly retorts.