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    Learn a language in 10 days!?!

    16­ Replies
    Topic

    Learn a language in 10 days!?!

    Comment
    My dad sent me this about a 10 day language learning programme, apparently he got it from MSN...Am I the only one who gets annoyed by claims like this that you can learn a language without any effort??

    ***

    Careers
    A pillow soft landing and anxiety disappears. You're in a far-off
    land, but things don't seem so distant. You've planned well. Confidence is on
    your side when you speak the language. ''Take me to my hotel, please. Thanks.''
    A room service call later and you're relaxing in bed, sipping a glass of wine
    and watching the annual street fair on the local news.

    Today is for jetlag, then tomorrow that important meeting. That
    street fair. Why not? You tour the place and tastes, taking pictures along the
    way, until you saunter through a market's door. Chocolate, cheese, and wine. A
    few treasures to take home, but the setting sun lets you know that this
    delightful day is nearly done. You deviate a little on the way back to your
    hotel and find yourself in a popular meeting place engrossed in conversation.
    You listen, laugh, chat - a variety of subjects - but when jetlag starts to set
    in, you decide it's probably time to get some sleep.

    Your Big Day's today. You graciously receive everyone in their own
    language and engage them with a few of the jokes you learned the night before.
    Their laughter is your signal to begin. Your proposal resonates well with all.
    You could've translated it, but why? They learn those business terms in
    English, anyway. But you would have been hard-pressed to ease the tension in
    English and there's no way you'd have learned to use new language on the fly.
    Your new abilities to improvise, speak, listen, and learn in another language
    paid off by building your confidence and rapport. Your Pimsleur audio course
    was definitely worth it!

    It's Quick and Easy

    Since 1980, more than 25 million people just like you have improved
    their lives by using the Pimsleur Approach. It's so effective that even the FBI
    and CIA trust it.

    Before we learned to read and write we learned to speak. Yet most
    programs teach you from a textbook or computer program. There's a more natural
    way to learn. Dr. Pimsleur spent 40 years discovering the fastest and easiest
    way for you to learn a new language. If you can invest 30 minutes a day, you'll
    be speaking another language in only 10 days.

    ''Learn French while commuting, German while jogging, Spanish
    while cooking all with no written materials.'' - Daily News
    AuthorMarie15 Feb 07, 21:38
    Comment
    I learned Mandarin Chinese with Pimsleur's. The programme is okay. It teaches you the basics, no more.
    You understand people if you don't try to understand every single word. But I wouldn't say it maked you absolutely fluent. It took me more than 10 days, though, to get through with the course.;)
    #1Authorblucuraçaño2 (103478) 15 Feb 07, 22:00
    Comment
    I set my satnav to Italian and am learning phrases like "Si prepari a girare a sinistra, tra ottocento metri" or "ha oltrepassato il limite di velocita" (comes quite often). The spelling is my guess.
    Having learned most of the phrases I have now started with Greek, quite a mouthful and I haven't a clue how to write it. :-D
    But I wish there were more useful phrases coming all the time, as I feel I could learn a lot sitting in my car. Maybe I should get some CDs or MP3s and play them all the time instead.
    #2AuthorGhol ‹GB›15 Feb 07, 22:42
    Comment
    10 days ??? - What a waste of time !!! -

    Somewhere on one of my many bookshelfes, there is a book entitled:

    'Read Japanese today!'

    Well, and to talk with George Mikes, one should at least spend 8 (eight) hours in a foreign country before writing a guide on it (Denmark for Beginners) . . .

    Beat that, if you can! . . .
    #3AuthorDaddy15 Feb 07, 23:11
    Comment
    Something I find equally annoying for the same reasons: the way some authors so generously endow their characters with prodigious (and utterly unrealistic) foreign language skills. It gives people completely the wrong idea of what it means to learn a language.

    For example, I recently read Digital Fortress by Dan Brown (*blush* - I'd had a hard week at work and needed something trashy to wind down with on a long train journey), in which one of the characters is an American who speaks all the main Western European languages in addition to several Asian ones (including Mandarin and Japanese). I think this guy is described as being fluent in about 8 languages. Moreover, when he is sent to Spain, he is able to affect different regional Spanish accents to the extent that the Spaniards he encounters have no doubt whatsoever that he is a fellow countryman.

    Now, I consider myself a reasonably dab hand at languages (thanks to a happy coincidence of circumstances and interests), but I'm perfectly happy to accept that there are people out there who are more talented and dedicated than I am and speak more languages than I do, and speak them well. But 8? Well enough to not only be taken for a native speaker, but to be able to switch between regional accents at will? Sorry, I don't buy it. It's bloody hard to fake a regional accent even in your native language. (In fact, it's difficult to even recognise some accents in your native language. I recently moved to Germany and am only slowly starting to be able to differentiate a bit more finely than "Northern Germany", "Berlin" and "Bavaria", even though German is one of my native languages and I have a fairly good ear.) In a foreign language? Not unless you've lived in the country for quite a few years, which this guy hadn't.

    OK, it's (bad) fiction, and only an idiot can pick up a Dan Brown novel and expect it to ring true, but still...
    #4Author dulcinea (238640) 15 Feb 07, 23:56
    Comment
    Ever heard of Heinrich Schliemann? He actually developed a method of how to teach languages to himself - and he learnt more than 8, including Mandarin. He studied Russian for six weeks and could write business letters afterwards. I think there are people who are talented.
    #5AuthorLull16 Feb 07, 00:08
    Comment
    Thank you, Lull, for mentioning good old Schliemann!
    (I was going to mentioning him next-time around! . . . )

    What he did (to my knowledege) was to have a major epos, the Ilias, translated into the language he wanted to learn and he learned (and thereby compared it to) his native (and/or the original) language . . .


    There are quite a few people having mastered more than 3 or 4 languages (or many more) in their lifetime . . .
    #6AuthorDaddy16 Feb 07, 00:42
    Comment
    "Before we learned to read and write we learned to speak. Yet most programs teach you from a textbook or computer program".

    But Schliemann did use written material and grammar books!
    For a lot of people learning is easier with visual aids, even though the notion of different types of learners is still under debate. Blending out any written material would also hamper learners' own research, as students of such a programme wouldn't have any clue of the phoneme-grapheme relations in that particular language. Learning is also discovering things by yourself, and all our cultural techniques shoulkd be used for it.
    And I do not see much sense in doing away with learning methods that adults have - sometimes painfully - acquired over the years. Good teachers/programmes should make best use of what is there.
    Besides, when use (or acquire) languages other than the mother tongue(s), different areas of the brain are involved, as far as I know. So merely copying the way children learn cannot be the answer for most people, I guess. I remain deeply suspicious of such promises (learning a language in 10 days).
    #7Author Ingeborg (274140) 16 Feb 07, 00:58
    Comment
    sorry, sollte heißen:
    Besides, when we use..."
    #8Author Ingeborg (274140) 16 Feb 07, 00:59
    Comment
    Vielleicht in dem Zusammenhang noch ein Lesetipp:
    Die gerettete Zunge (Elias Canetti)
    #9Author Ingeborg (274140) 16 Feb 07, 01:17
    Comment
    I don't doubt that some people can learn languages very quickly, and master several...but it is more the claim that you can get fluency at the drop of a hat if given the right magical solution that is aggravating!

    Sure, you can learn the basics quickly, but to get beyond that, build up your vocabulary, knowledge of idioms, feeling for grammar, irregularities, you need much more time.

    And that picture of you charming people with jokes in their own language is
    so silly...humour is one of the hardest things to get right in a foreign language in my experience.

    I learned German best through "absorption", although learning basic conjugations etc. with a textbook helped, so I can understand the argument that it is not all about memorizing grammar...but I still disagree fundamentally with the claims here!
    #10AuthorMarie16 Feb 07, 01:28
    Comment
    Das Thema erinnert mich an Jugendzeiten mit Old Shatterhand alias Kara Ben Nemsi. Der sprach wirklich jede Sprache, auf die er traf, fließend und akzentfrei, von Arabisch. Albanis über Türkisch bis zu jeder beliebigen Indianersprache.
    Allerdings hat der Autor -f alls ich mich recht erinnere - auch nie den geringsten Versuch gemacht zu erklären, wie dieses Wunder funktioniert hat.
    #11AuthorRe16 Feb 07, 07:29
    Comment
    It's so effective that even the FBI and CIA trust it.

    And what is that telling you??? HAHAHAHAHA!!!
    #12Author---16 Feb 07, 08:37
    Comment
    There is a lot to be said for the basic method, but clearly the claims are exaggerated. Personally, I found the Linguaphone "deutscher Aufbaukurs" (the so-called advanced one) very useful. Although it has some written elements, a great deal of it is CD-based "listen and repeat/answer" stuff.

    In about 70 or 80 hours work spread over about ten weeks, it got my German up from basic and very faltering to a level of reasonable competence, but by no means real fluency. To my mind, that is a good result, and reasonably in line with the claims for that course.

    That is realistic for someone with probably better than average natural ability. (My French master at school said I was a "born linguist", but I think he was exaggerating.)

    I find more ambitious claims hard to believe.

    A bit of arithmetic is enlightening. If, to be really fluent in a language, you need a vocabulary of about 6000 words (somewhat less than an educated native speaker), and you have ten sessions of 30 minutes in which to learn them, then on average you have to pick up twenty words per minute and add them successfully to your vocabulary. Does that leave enough time for grammar and enough of the subtle cultural stuff that you don't make an idiot of yourself? I doubt it.
    #13AuthorJoe W16 Feb 07, 10:03
    Comment
    If you can invest 30 minutes a day, you'll be speaking another language in only 10 days

    Wow, that's slow! I did an audio course in Welsh from the BBC and I could repeat the words as soon as I heard them - I was speaking Welsh after only 10 seconds! :-)

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/catchphrase/
    #14Author CM2DD (236324) 16 Feb 07, 10:11
    Comment
    When I was 16, my family and I went to Greece for a vacation. I thought I would see if I could pick up any Greek before I went. I bought one of those audio/book combination packs. In no time, I had mastered a wide array of thoroughly useful phrases, such as "This is a carton of ciagarettes. It is a gift." and "Waiter, this wine tastes of cork." The only thing I actually was able to use was "Thank you" and various greetings.

    The problem I have with courses like that is that they teach you specific, set phrases but not how to construct your own. They don't teach vocabulary and grammar and how to combine those two to express whatever throughts you may have. If you're not in a situation where those exact phrases are useful, you're hard pressed to say anything else. I may have been able to voice a certain complaint about some wine, but I didn't know how to take elements of the sentence (such as waiter or wine) and express any other thoughts (like "I would like some wine" or "This wine is excellent").

    I think in 10 days, you can learn some rudimentary phrases, enough to find a train station or order a meal. But I doubt you'll be speaking like a native speaker, and the charming scenario of lightening up the business meeting with a jokes in the local language seems a little far-fetched (as others have also pointed out).
    #15AuthorNicole <AE> (236963) 16 Feb 07, 13:52
    Comment
    I used Pimsleur to start learning German. It has the advantage of getting you to speak right away. I thought it was an excellent course. I paid $700 for 90 lessons and it was worth every penny.
    My father had his school buy the Spanish version to use in his high school classes. He was also quite impressed with it.
    It's obviously not going to teach you everything, but it a really good way to get started.
    #16AuthorKate16 Feb 07, 14:06
     
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