Beyond Bounds Blog

I’ve recently discovered a blogger at http://thelinguist.blogs.com/.  I added Steve’s blog recently and was drawn to his newest post called “the real secret to language learning success - intensity.”

The main difference that I’ve found from his language learning and mine is that he focuses on INPUT while to I focus on OUTPUT.  I recommend getting up to conversations and learning practical phrases as soon as possible, while he recommends starting off by getting a feel for the language and not studying grammar at all in the beginning.

Steve and I believe in different methodology, but that only proves one thing: there are different ways of learning language for different people with different goals and interests.  Steve is a master of language learning (a true polyglot) and I recommend that language learners check out his blog.  I agree with almost everything he says, and his methodology is much more fine tuned than mine is.  His methodology obviously works, maybe it will for you too.

An outline of his methodology can be found here.

Here are the first of his seven principles:

The Seven Principles of the Linguist Method.

1)    Enjoy yourself: Enjoy the experience of learning. Enjoy the language you are learning. Choose a language to study that you enjoy or find ways to enjoy the language you are studying. Choose content that you like. Do learning activities that you like.
2)    Focus on input first: Listen and read. Get used to the language. Do not feel you have to produce the language. Just get the language into you. Listen often while doing other tasks, wherever you can. You can also listen while reading, or you can just read.
….

He also offers resources for language learners, called “LingQ“.  There are podcasts and other resources.   The one for Chinese can be learned LingQ“.  There are podcasts and other resources.   The one for Chinese can be learned here.

A new perspective on things and new resources can never hurt.  I’ll be reading through his blog a lot more and perhaps do a review of his methods and book later.