7 Steps to Help You Learn a Language Fast, Effectively, and Forever
“Fluent Forever” by Gabriel Wyner is pure gold for anyone who wants to learn a foreign language.
In 2019, I realized that I had to improve my English, so I enrolled in a course. However, I felt that I was investing a lot of time in how much I was learning. After three months, I gave up.
Later I decided to study a grammar book from A to Z. I really got better, but that wasn’t at all a pleasant process. As there is still room for improvement and I want to learn other languages, I wondered if there was another way. I have come to find Gabriel Wyner’s Fluent Forever, which proposes a pleasant way to become fluent in a foreign language, with roots in neuroscience.
This method makes use of spaced repetition and recall and efficiently battles overlearning. Spaced repetition consists of practising something over a few days, gradually extending the times between repetitions and changing the order of the materials to be repeated. In this case, the materials are flashcards, and practice means recalling pronunciation, words, and grammar rules instead of just reading them.
You can either use a computerized Spaced Repetition System, like Anki, or create your own physical flashcards. There are some advantages to using Anki since it can handle images and sound files. Plus, it knows which cards you must review each day to optimize your study time. If you still prefer paper flashcards, use the Leitner System to schedule them.
Now that I have explained the foundation of this method, let’s take a look at each of its steps!
Learn Pronunciation
Good pronunciation habits are essential from the beginning, they will help you to avoid broken words. These are words that you think are pronounced one way but are actually pronounced differently. Learning a language with broken words is like learning two languages instead of one.
If you learn the sounds of a language first, your ears get used to them, which leverages vocabulary acquisition, listening comprehension, and speaking. The best tool for this is a pronunciation trainer. You can buy pronunciation trainers made by the author of Fluent Forever or make your own as he details here. A pronunciation trainer relies on minimal pair testing for ear training and the International Phonetic Alphabet, which teaches how to make the sounds.
A simple but effective trick to untie your tongue is Back-Chaining, which can be used to connect letters or words. To give an example, try to say the Russian word “vzdrognu.” You will realize that it is much easier if you learn it backward:
u…nu…gnu…ognu…rognu…drognu…zdrognu…vzdrognu
A few hours of study should be enough in this phase.
Fewer Words, More Fluency
The next step is learning some vocabulary. With the right word collection, your first thousand will allow you to recognize 75% of what you read. You must start with simple words, that are used all the time.
Wyner built a 625-length list with some of the most frequent words you will find in any language. By making flashcards from these words and practising for 30 minutes a day, you will learn them within a month or two. It’s very important to not put your native language in those flashcards, the idea is to think in the new language from the very beginning. Take a look here to get more details on how to create the flashcards.
Frequency dictionaries and phrasebooks are also good resources for this phase.
Fewer Sentences, More Grammar
To learn the grammar rules, there is no need to do all the exercises in the grammar book. Read the explanations, choose one or two interesting examples from each topic, and put them in flashcards.
Consider that the sentence “She ate her sister’s birthday cake” appeared in the past tense section of your grammar book. It will focus on the verbs, while flashcards will teach you all aspects of the sentence, like where to put the pronoun, how sister turns into sister’s, and so on. When you get to the pronouns section of your grammar book, you have already learned it.
In addition to the examples in the grammar book, you can write your own sentences, as long as you ask for corrections from native speakers. Lang-8 and italki are good resources for that.
For more information on how to create flashcards for sentences see here, here, and here. As soon as you get to the middle of the grammar book, it is time to take a break from grammar.
Back to Words
How many words do you know now? Grab a frequency dictionary or a frequency list and reach the milestone of a thousand words. More flashcards incoming!
Finish Your Grammar Book
Having a thousand words in your pocket, you can finish your grammar. Again, your relationship with flashcards is kind of abusive.
After you finish your grammar book, you can go in different ways. If you just want to be fluent enough to have a conversation, you can stop. Otherwise, you can either learn more words (about 5500 words for 90% comprehension and 12500 for 95%) or get a thematic vocabulary book to specialize in.
Read Your First Book and Watch Your First TV Show
Your first book must be familiar to you, a translation of something you’ve already read or a book that has been turned into a movie you’ve already seen. Use the corresponding audiobook together, it will help you read faster.
Regarding TV shows, subtitles might come in handy, but there will be no difference between this and reading a book accompanied by an audiobook. To improve listening, don’t use subtitles. You might feel overwhelmed by doing this, so choose your TV series very carefully and read about it first. You can even read a summary of each episode before watching it, as long as you do it in your new language.
Why a TV show and not movies? Because TV shows will be easier at first, you only have to understand who is who and what is going on once, so you can focus on improving your listening. Choose the type of TV show you want, as long as it is not comedy because you might not understand some punch lines and get frustrated.
After a little practice, you won’t need to read summaries of the episodes, you will handle comedies, you can listen to audiobooks alone, podcasts, you name it. Your sense of accomplishment will skyrocket!
Speak, Speak, Speak!
The last phase is to improve your speech. For this, there is no other way than speaking. italki and Verbling are examples of platforms you can use to talk with teachers.
If you don’t know what to talk about, consider these resources to get some ideas:
- Conversation questions on Fluent Forever blog
- Book of Questions, by Gregory Stock
- Book of Horrible Questions, by Smith and Doe
Final Thoughts
To note that during this process, you should never stop reviewing your flashcards and creating new ones. Gabriel Wyner claims that you should do flashcards reviews for one year before stopping completely.
This method is better for someone who wants to learn a language on his own, in an off-road fashion. However, it can also be used if you already enrolled in a language class, you can still build flashcards every time you read or hear interesting words or sentences, which will speed up your learning.
I strongly think you should give this book a chance, I found it really hard to provide an overview of everything I have learned from Fluent Forever. For me, learning a new language will never be the same!
