Fluent in 3 Months - Benny Lewis

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excited to get started on them herself. She turned up to her first French class with glee, but she finished it in a flood of tears. Her teacher didn’t know about her hearing problem, and the lesson had been given entirely as an oral one with no written cues. Since then, though, Julie has learned to always ask for new words to be written down for her.

      Despite this bad start, Julie went on to study French for four years in high school plus one year in university. She also took three years of Spanish. She would shine at the written word in both languages, but listening was her sticking point.

      Since her brother had gone down the same path, ahead of her, she found out that she could request both her French and Spanish listening examinations be done with a real person reading the script to her, which allowed her to lipread as well as listen. Her teachers in school were otherwise very encouraging and supportive, and she ended up winning prizes for being the best French and Spanish student in her fourth year.

      During university, she had the chance to study for a year in Sweden. She made sure that her teacher knew about her hearing problems from the start, and she was now much more confident about asking for things to be repeated or written down. She also grew more confident about using Swedish in front of others without much embarrassment.

      By the end of university, she had learned three languages. Since then, she has studied basic Gaelic and even recently started learning Japanese. In just a few months, despite how difficult her condition makes it for her, she learned the meaning of hundreds of kanji (Japanese characters) and even started speaking Japanese.

      Julie is a true testament to the idea that there are no limits to what a motivated person can achieve. She has haggled for French books in a street market in France. She has shopped for tea in Sweden and even used her Swedish to ‘hack’ Norwegian and Danish while travelling in Norway and Denmark. Her passion for language-learning has also meant that she has reserved restaurant tables in Italian, bought coffee in Greek, and spent over half an hour discussing, in Spanish, the state of the world with a little old lady in Barcelona.

      Rather than live up to people’s stereotypes of how she should live her life, she has been the one helping others during her travels, translating for other students, friends, and even teachers, as they were too afraid to do it or hadn’t learned the language themselves.

      Most Myths Are Just Excuses

      Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.

      – HENRY FORD

      Language-learning is a mentally challenging endeavour. As such, if we’re sure we can’t, then we lose our motivation, our passion dwindles, our pessimism takes over, and we simply won’t learn the language. This is not due to any reason we give but our devotion to that reason.

      I hope you see from the previous stories that no matter what challenges you face, someone else has gone through the same or much worse. If Julie has the courage to take on so many languages, then how can you fall back on such weak excuses as being too busy or not having a language gene?

      The truth is that passion will get you through every problem if you are serious about learning a language. There is no excuse good enough to justify not being able to learn a language. If you didn’t find the reason holding you back among the twenty I listed, however, it may in fact have an entire chapter dedicated to it later. And if you are still in doubt about a particular setback that prevents you from learning a language, check out fi3m.com/ch–1 and find an even longer version of this list, watch some inspiring videos, and read stories from other struggling language learners and suggestions on where you can go for language advice. No matter what problem you may be facing, someone before you has had the same problem yet has learned the target language regardless.

      Momentum is essential to both beginning and maintaining good progress in language-learning, which is why I wanted to start by clearing these major hurdles. Too many language learners focus on the content of a language and on finding the right courses, but even those who have great language-learning tools and strategies are still at a disadvantage if they don’t clear these hurdles first.

      Now that we’ve got the right attitude and extinguished as many excuses as possible, we can charge into this language-learning project with much greater momentum.

       Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It

      Do away with vague daydreams, such as ‘learn Spanish’, by setting specific end goals within specific time frames and incorporating new language-learning techniques to achieve concrete results.

      The most common time of the year, by far, to decide to take on a new language is, of course, January 1, as part of a New Year’s resolution. Generally, the resolution is something along the lines of ‘Learn Spanish (or whatever language it may be) within a year.’ Unfortunately, many fail miserably. This is precisely why I recommend you pick a specific target with a specific deadline for your language-learning project. I don’t have resolutions; I have missions. The word mission even has a sense of urgency and requires a plan of action beyond what simply promising yourself ever could. Having watched probably too many action films and TV shows while growing up, I like to add a little drama to otherwise mundane tasks, and the concept of a mission to be completed against a ticking clock makes it seem much more exciting.

      This brings us to the title of this book: Fluent in 3 Months. The point is not that you have to aim for fluency in three months, but that you do need to be specific about what you’re aiming for, and this title is one such example of a very specific target and a deadline to reach it by. Successful language learners are those who are as specific as possible with their goals.

      To help you gauge what to aim for, I’ll dive into what fluency and other useful targets really mean, and we’ll look at how much time you need to reach those targets. Plus, I’ll explain why ‘Fluent in 3 Months’ has been a great goal for me personally and why fluency – and beyond – is a goal more of us can strive for.

      What Fluency Isn’t

      The question of what fluency means is one of great controversy, depending on whom you ask. I want to provide a much more precise understanding of fluency once and for all.

      First, some definitions can be way too loose. A monolingual novice with next to no language-learning experience may ask me which languages I speak fluently, but before I quantify my answer I will ask for her understanding of the idea of fluency, because her definition may be more what I’d consider that of a functional tourist – a level easily achievable by anyone within a few hours or days – and not fluency at all.

      Second, there is sometimes a too elitist way of looking at being fluent (or saying that you ‘speak’ a language) as being equivalent to a native speaker in all ways. People who look at fluency this way sometimes go overboard and demand that you should be able to

       participate in a debate on a complex or philosophical topic,

       speak with no hesitations,

       use complex vocabulary and advanced expressions,

       never have any serious miscommunications, and

       be able to participate in a discussion that any typical native might have.

      The problem here, though, is that if you have such high criteria for fluency, then I have to confess I am not fluent even in English, my native language!

      I can’t participate in a debate on many complex topics (including philosophical ones; it’s just not my forte). I hesitate all the time in English (watch any unscripted video of me speaking English online, and you’ll hear plenty of ‘ums’ and ‘uhs’).

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