258

It’s darker in the morning as the shortest day approaches (3 weeks from today at the start of Ramadan). Therefore, I wasn’t able to see well enough to switch between folders on the mp3 player. That means that I’ll need to arrange files so that they can play one after another, without needing to jump about. Either that or carry a torch.

Footwear too, and maybe socks to slip over them. The slopes are slippery when it’s icy. 

But back to languages—my approach boils down to doing everything at once, not one word or grammar rule at a time.

257

It occurs/occurred to me in my sleep that life consists of a series of problems that we seek solutions, for in the manner of a game. Something happens—or exists—so we do something about it in response, and the game keeps going.

In the case of languages, I’ve chosen to fix my efforts upon fixing the difficulty that people experience in figuring out a better way to understand each other’s communication tools.

Well, that’s the philosophical insight I woke up with—take it or leave it. In simpler language, I’m interested in solving the languages puzzle. It’s a doozy.

256

‘Spanish get used to it’ is taking shape. I have 33 units lined up. There’s a practical element for each, a theoretical element (outlined by up to 10 key words) and homework in the form of a 100-word topic.

My next step is to go through my various projects in search of points I may have overlooked so as to include them. After that, I’ll do some videoing. 

I need those video clips, a brochure, a list of outcomes and a course outline to present to Phil. 

And it wouldn’t hurt to complete reading that confident body language book too!

255

I spent two hours at each end of the day—at Hotere House and at the Marsh Centre—working on the outline of my approximately 30-module language course. I haven’t yet decided on a name for it. Ostensibly it caters to Spanish (for a group of Otago Polytechnic staff who will visit Argentina in October) but in reality it will allow anyone to pick up any language.

Even if I do say so myself, it’s coming on nicely. I’m mapping it out as an Excel document. That enables me to manipulate the order and to keep track of every detail.

254

Started reading Janine Driver’s You say more than you think. And ended the day with James Lee Burke’s Creole belle on p249 with another reference to body language:

I searched his face, his eyes, his body language, looking for the blink, the tic in the cheek, the stiffness in the lips, the twitch in the hand that signals a lie.

Driver would say that that is a myth—an example of “Old Body Language”. And it strikes me that it’s the ‘Old’ language learning method that I too am trying to replace.

I’ve the feeling that Buckminster Fuller would agree.

253

What does it take to pick up, or get used to another language from scratch—to get it up the point where the rest is simply maintenance—and improvement—to an intermediate level, say?

It boils down to what takes getting used to, whether that’s the sounds, the alphabet, the vocabulary, the word order, a different set of patterns (grammar), and maybe the conventions to do with how that language is used.

I really feel that for a language close to English it ought to take about a month of an hour a day. I really should test that out.

252

What would be the minimum amount of time needed to maintain a language? And what would be the maximum number of them that you could manage?

In terms of maintenance, I’m talking about Input i.e. listening and reading. And I’m talking about keeping a language up to speed, not getting it up to speed from zero.

I guess that 10 minutes every other day could do it. And so a total of an hour a day would work for a dozen, 2 hours for a couple of dozen. It’s a fun thing to dream about. 

Yet it isn’t a dream.

251

First thing in the morning is when I’m freshest (and when I write my 100 words). That’s also when I have some time to spare. I’m am early bird, and I like to prepare hours ahead. 

In fact, I get ready too early. Which results in regular ‘chinks’ of time, or windows of opportunity. What I’m trying to say is that it would be a good idea to get in some language activity once my daily preparations have been made.

It’s not yet 5 a.m. as I type. So once I’m ready for class, I know what I’ll do next.

250

For the quarter-thousandth milestone I was planning to write about reading on the toilet. And that’s not a bad topic. But instead, I want to deal with reading—reading alone—more generally.

When you get to a certain level in a language, then it pays to simply read without listening. You get more input when you can read more quickly than some narrator speaks. Also, there’s less paraphernalia. All you need is a book.

And so, for Dutch and German, I’ll set aside time in the evening. Plus, I’ll carry around a Kindle to make use of the odd moment.

249

I was working on Acquire Spanish, my universal language course. Specifically, I was trying to to come up with a term that defined the tipping point when the language habit kicks in.

I thought of ‘critical mass’, ‘combustion point’, ‘flash point’, ‘auto-ignition’, ‘rolling momentum’, or ‘overcoming the force of friction’. I even tried to co-opt Newton’s first law which says that an object—whether moving or stationary—tends to remain in that state.

But my best word picture, one that does not employ the jargon of science, is simply to describe it as the moment when language activity becomes self-sustaining.

248

I completed the first chapter of HP1 last night. How many times does that make it—20? Doing it in all sorts of ways. This time I collected good sentences, ending up with 172.

Tim Ferriss claims that you can learn any language in just one hour from 6 sentences. I reckon my sentences are better.

I might whittle mine down to the best 100. At 100 per chapter, that would give me 1700 from the entire book. Great fun!

And that’s the point: any way that you ‘do’ language and find fun is a great way to make progress.

247

At yesterday’s dinner party, with Kiwis, Japanese and French guests present, language was the hot topic.

There were tongue twisters, pronunciation hurdles—‘foo’ and ‘h’—and ‘New Zild’.

I was interested most by the conversation around ESOL. I was struck by just how many assumptions people take for granted about how we might tackle language instruction.

It’s as if the alphabet is already in place—an English one. We may need to tweak it—add accents or umlauts here or there, or modify the order. But we do not imagine that an entirely new set of symbols may be needed.

246

When the rest of the household wakes at 4 a.m. there’s every chance that you don’t get done what you usually do first thing in the morning.

My old mum and my 7-yr-old daughter each reserved one of my ears. I couldn’t concentrate. But in spite of it all, I did manage to collect another 25 Harry Potter sentences.

First, I listen and highlight. Second, I go over those highlighted sentences and cut and paste those that are shorter than one line and that I can get to grips with more-or-less instantly.

Anything else is just icing on the cake.

245

In a couple of sessions, I’m up to 50 sentences. Japanese i+1 Harry Potter sentences, that is. They are short. And they are mostly understandable.

So what am I going to do with them? Probably nothing. Because, if I slow down to examine and analyze then I lose out. I would have less time to continue adding to my collection, since it’s massive input that I require. Or, to lift a phrase from elsewhere, Light, Wide & Shallow.

I wonder whether anyone else has designed a system around Krashen’s hypotheses and other related principles. And have they done them justice?

244

A couple of language-related activities today—I completed a 10-day video course, and I read a book.

I do videoing well, but it doesn’t come easily. I come across OK on camera, quirky, funny, I’m told. I feel that it’s certainly the right vehicle to convey advice about language haquisition. But I do need to make better use notes as my mind tends to go blank.

As for the book, it’s in English. John Grisham’s The Confession is an addictive read. So that makes me wonder, at which level (of ability) does a book in another language begin to ‘grab’?

243

I retrieved a little passion where it was languishing and placed it where it would thrive. Do some of that here and there in your life, and see what happens!

I’d been struggling through Greg Bear’s Eon. The premise is fine, but I just couldn’t keep track of the characters and how the whole hung together. And so 4/5s of the way through I gave up. Relief!

And then I returned to JHP1. I sifted through my highlighted sentences and copy-pasted 30+ sentences. And as before, I could hardly stop myself. I got my mojo working, and my passion back.

242

Following on from yesterday, I listened to HP1 while reading. I found that I could keep up highlighting as I listened.

The Philosopher’s Stone is a Word Document, and my highlighter is an electronic ‘wand’. I’ve gone over the start of this book so many times that I ‘know’ about 75% of the sentences. This is certainly a great way to skim. 

I’m not yet sure what the next step of this exercise will be. But I’m sure that after going through the whole book—which I haven’t yet managed (in Japanese)—will be a giant step for this man.

241

With Japanese, I’m starting to collect sentences again. That’s what I really got into, previously. And so I want to make use of that addiction again.

Last night, I started with HP1. I scanned (didn’t read) and marked useful sentences with a B4 pencil. Later, I may electronically cut and paste.

In line with my read-at-the-speed-of-sound methodology, I may try to do this together while listening to the audiobook.

Yes, you don’t ‘read’ every word or every sentence. But just as a glass may be regarded as half-empty or half-full, an unfamiliar foreign text may be regarded as 1%-full too.

240

There’s really no such thing as multi-tasking. You can only do one thing at a time. And so you get into trouble—me, yesterday—when you consider everything that needs doing. You end up overloaded and overwhelmed.

The answer is to tackle things individually, by slotting them into a routine. That’s my goal as regards acquiring 10 languages ‘at once’. So why not apply that approach to the rest of my life as well?

The second-happiest times in my life were when I had nothing on my mind. The happiest times were when I was concentrating on just one project.

239

With Spanish, my game's 'Catching Words on the Fly'. 

You listen—in English or Spanish—to your resource without pausing, while following the written text—in Spanish. You also have a notebook. Then, you jot down one word per line into your notebook from each line of text, a different word each time. They must be recognizable words. 

I could do that for an entire chapter. I could repeat the chapter to catch a second word, and then a third. I could reconstitute the story in yet another notebook (by placing words in their correct positions.

There are various options.

238

The latest news is that I want to rationalize my language acquisition somewhat (make the process more efficient). To that end, I’ll combine a few recent ideas.

I’ll devise compulsive activities tailored to each language. I’ll tag them to various times of the day. And I’ll make sure that I have the materials and tools always at hand. Voila, instant combustion!

I’d misplaced both my mp3 player and Kindle about a week ago—couldn’t remember where I’d used them last. I was just about to organize a hunt when they turned up in a cardboard files box. Oh, the relief!

237

I recall spending literally hours ‘collecting’ sentences from a Harry Potter book in Japan at Macdonald’s. The time just flew by. I made good progress in Japanese.

So it seems to me that that is the state I need to aim for—to design some sort of activity—or activities—around language acquisition that are compulsive. They would need to mesh with my nature and satisfy my personal quirks.

That all sounds rather nebulous, doesn’t it? Still, every good idea is born drowning.

Apropos of nothing, a colleague mentioned to me yesterday that Listen has the same letters as Silent.

236

I’ve created several short on-the-spot videos. It’s a good approach. I cannot over-think, and the end result is certainly natural. 

But there’s the rub: I can’t multi-task well. I mean that I cannot think at the same time I’m speaking. My eyes track all over the place, and my face contorts. My mind is literally a blank while I’m communicating orally, whereas thinking on the fly is no problem here-end-now as I type.

Perhaps it’s practice. Perhaps when I’ve clocked up 236 episodes in front of the camera I’ll be as good, or better, than I am behind the keyboard.

235

Noticing things should feature more prominently in my hacquisition course. That’s my latest idea.

It’s all very well using comprehensible input, speed-of-sound and attitude. But that recipe lacks a little je ne sais quoi. There’s some elbow grease missing. It needs a little focus.

Something along the lines of looking for and jotting down ten items of note, maybe one per line of text. I’ve a notion that what you pay attention to and discover yourself is riper to be remembered—more i+1, in other words.

I’ll get started right now. I’ll set aside an exercise book for random observations.

234

I’m undecided about something. For a language that you are starting off with—say Spanish for me—is it better to do some children’s stories first, or to get stuck into Harry Potter immediately?

It should be possible to do the latter and look for i+1 sentences and phrases where you find them. Concentrate on them where they are embedded. You don’t need 95% known text, since the whole of it is made understandable by using my method. However, it is probably better, psychologically, to head over to the likes of Bookbox initially.

So I don’t know—maybe do both?

233

The 6^th step—the 3^rd of the trio that constitutes the ‘meat of hackquisition’—is listening to Spanish, say, while reading in Spanish. It’s like watching a movie with the hard-of-hearing subtitles (except that that would be too much like karaoke; having the whole page of text to look at encourages better scanning and skimming).

You cover a lot of ground at speed.

I read recently that the written form of a language only serves as a reminder to those who already know the language. So I try to ‘lean’ more toward listening than reading when I do them simultaneously.

232

On page 228 of Eon, Greg Bear writes:

“I need to learn twenty-first-century Russian,” he said . . . “How long will that take?” . . .
“You can be taught a command of spoken colloquial and technical Russian in two hours . . . Please relax . . .We begin first with the Cyrillic alphabet . . .”

Really? A super-duper way to learn a language in a couple of hours kicks off with the alphabet? To me, this illustrates the paucity of thinking that surrounds language instruction.

An alphabet is largely useless. I’d never make it my focus.

231

I interrupt this thread to report on something new. I started a 10-day video challenge to improve my skills in that area. I’m part of a group, and every day we film a short video of ourselves speaking – 1^st take, unscripted, unedited. Connection, not perfection. Afterward, we view each other’s clips and leave supportive comments.

This has parallels with my 100-word blog post idea. 

It’ll also help me to prepare the 35 or so modules I’ll make on language acquisition (Hackquisition?)

So I’ll just light myself up, look at the lens, be myself, and speak from the heart. So simple!

230

The opposite of listening to Spanish while reading English is to listen to English while reading in Spanish. And Stephen Fry does a good job!

At first this will feel weird. It too feels as if nothing is being achieved. And yet it serves to link understanding to Spanish. It makes the input comprehensible. Mirror-repeating this and the previous step for the same passage of text cannot but help with acquisition.

I used to find this arrangement more difficult than the reverse. I’d need to pause after every sentence. But I have no problems now and can just smoothly continue.

229

The first 3 steps are introductory. They take little time. The next 3 steps take longer. They don’t take more time, but by recycling them you spend longer.

Because they are new, they also take time to get used to.

For the 4^th step, I listened to a passage in Spanish without pausing while skim reading that same text in English.

This went easily—almost too easily. It didn’t feel that I was achieving anything. It took no effort.

However, in just minutes I reviewed thousands of words and hundreds of patterns. I began to ‘internalize’ the vocabulary and grammar.

228

After looking and hearing at Spanish, the third step is to combine them. Examine how they match up by listening to a passage as you follow with your eyes upon the page. 

You learn that Spanish is more regular than English. Its fewer vowel sounds are more predictably represented, as are the consonants. However, the ‘h’ is silent, the ‘j’ has a guttural flavor, ‘e’s are generally sounded, ‘qu’ is ‘k’, and ‘z’ is more like ‘th’.

Written Spanish looks more complicated. It has ‘ll’s at the start of some words. But the accented vowels seem simply to show stress.