Interesting post. I agree with many of his comments but not all. But each person has a different experience.
“I started with tapes, and always by myself. Tried schools and university, and all added together lasted a month and half! My philosophy is that language is all about imitation, so learn THEN understand is the key rule. Unfortunately most education systems these days are more and more the contrary of my theory, since in order to make people feel good while learning they make sure you understand BEFORE learning. What a waste of time! Sometimes the more you think, the less you learn. Which also means that at the end you are less able to think.”
Sort of like the video I made called “learn before you study”. http://bit.ly/jCB1Yk
"I learned most of my Chinese by myself in France, so my work was all about creating a Chinese environment around me, using all means I could think of. "
Yes you can create this language environment wherever you are today.
"What I notice is that in real life usually the accuracy of one’s pronunciation does not change much over the years. Most people who have a good accent when they’re fluent had a good accent from their first few words. And unfortunately most people who have a terrible accent when they start don’t improve much over the years. This is what I observe, and my conclusion is the same as yours: it is very much a matter of effort. Those people usually believe they don’t “have” the accent and stop trying after a while. "
This is a little contradictory. Either you need to " try to ge the accent" or you have it from the beginning. I believe that pronunciation is the area where talent comes in the most, and also where attitude is tremendously important. If you are prepared to let go and imitate you will do well. I also think that since the early period is spent listening and reading, you can start making the effort after having had a little exposure to the language.
Some people don’t hear the pronunciation because they don’t pay attention, and don’t want to.
Again the three keys:
Attitude, Time, and Attentiveness
What is so inspiring about Julian is his dedication, commitment and persistence. I didn’t know that he had started learning Chinese already back in 1998 but considering how good he is now, that makes a lot of sense to me. The morale of the story is that most people who excel at what they are doing, be it in business, arts, politics, language learning, got there through a mixture of some degree of talent and a lot of dedication, determination and transpiration. There are no shortcuts.
With that in mind I went to Moses website http://tinyurl.com/3bal7vb where he markets his FLR product. I have to say I found it somewhat offputting. First he seems a bit vague about his own achievements, in the welcome banner he says he speaks up to 50 languages, somewhere else he says he speaks more than a dozen “comfortably”. That sort of reminds me of Benny’s strange “conversational-fluency” dichotomy. To me, if you are fluent you are fluent, if you’re not, you’re not.
Then he makes it seem as if FLR is the magic key for him and potentially any other learner to learn 50 languages. I find this just dishonest. We all know there are no shortcuts, at least not for 99,99999% of us. On the other hand, If he is one of the 0.00001% wonderbrains in history, then there is no way to teach his genius to us mere mortals anyway. From the vague discriptions of his rather expensive DVD courses they seem like a rather conventional mixture of text and audio material like you would find in many other language products as well.
Moses seems to have gotten more commercially oriented (like Benny) as time has gone by. I believe that he is supporting himself as a freelance language instructor.
Nevertheless, his original motivation seems to have been just to encourage people to learn languages. He has to make a living somehow, so there’s no problem with him attempting to commercialize his knowledge. A certain amount of hype is probably forgivable.
I don’t really know what the FLR method means. I should probably watch one of his videos. For whatever reason, I haven’t been inspired to look into it. I do know that Moses focuses on learning certain key phrases in his languages that will allow him to converse early. He expects to be asked “Why are you learning this langauge?” and so on, so he wants to be able to answer those questions.
As for the 42 langauges, or 50 languages, or whatever, I can’t imagine that he’s claiming to have maintained an intermediate level in all of them. I can imagine someone having learned, at some point, to have basic conversations in 50 languages.
I like Moses. He is not pretentious. He is humble and invites us join him in his journey to learn languages. Those who want follow his path can do so. Others are still friends. He does not attack people who disagree with him. He is a good teacher, because he has the ability to inspire people to learn, the greatest gift a teacher can have.
We all know what works in language learning. There are no more secrets. You can of course design and market yet another DVD/book-based language course but it won’t add anything fundamentally new or differentiate itself much from existing products. I saw his introduction video to the Chinese FLR and it seems to be the same as Chinesepod courses, that is an mp3 together with transcript complemented with a teach yourself book that seemed to be third party. It would be much more effective to give the learner a good Chinese software dictionary, some directions on the web and off they go. The full Chinese course is in fact really expensive costing 400 US$ if I remember correctly.
Moses is of course a humble person except that he claims to speak 50 languages after 12 years of combined study time. Claiming that his seemingly conventional course is so much better than other conventional products is not credible to me. In fact he said in the video that after the course, one would be at a lower advanced level, which I don’t believe for a second. No single learning product will get you to a lower advanced level in Chinese.
Yes, Moses is a nice guy and yes, he doesn’t attack anyone and yes, some marketing hype is perfecly ok but on balance I couldn’t help but see some Benny elements in his product and the way he markets it.
Moses seems like a cool dude. He may slightly ‘overhype’ his methods for marketing purposes, and thus there there may arguably be certain similarities between FLR and Bennyism. However Moses is (unlike Benny) a fairly humble and modest kind of guy, and he doesn’t arrogantly and incoherently attack other systems such as LingQ.
This French guy, Julien Gaudfroy, seems pretty darned impressive to me. But in the video you linked to, I was kind of distracted by die hübsche kleine Moderatorin! ;-D (Seriously Friedemann, you should marry one of those, if you can!)
I think what is said on his website does contain some bold claims. But this is just marketing stuff, and we understand the way we read marketing stuff is different from reading, say, a blog post or a news article. It is like Steve saying “LinqQ is the best way to learn languages”. As long as they don’t say this all over the place, but only in marketing materials, it is fine with me.
As for the price, I don’t think it is that expensive, considered he is not just selling some physical products, but tutorial services as well. This is unlike Benny, who charges people like $60 per hour just to talk to him.
Edwin, yes, the marketing style is something that is very prevalent on the internet now - it follows a very distinct formula and uses lots of bold in-your-face claims and hyperbole dressed up as “positive thinking”. I don’t think it’s any sort of reflection of Moses’ skills and talents.
I wonder how effective this sort of “in your face” marketing is?!
It looks like Moses has been working as a language teacher for a while and from his site and videos his love of languages and language learning shines through and it seems he just really wants to share that with others, if he can make a living from teaching and inspiring others that’s brilliant!
I’m also interested in how he learned languages that are not related, like Zulu, Russian and Chinese - without traveling to countries that speak these languages. That’s very cool indeed.
If an Internet marketing technique is popular, I guess it must be working.
But I would imagine most of Moses’ students are probably attracted by his Youtube channel than his website.
Personally, I am not interested in his FLR method because it focuses on early speaking. However, Moses seems to put more emphasis on listening lately. Not sure if he will modify his FLR in the future.
I feel I need to start out every post with the same disclaimer, namely that I respect and admire Moses and so forth. Still his FLR introduction video didn’t make me want to by the product. What I found a bit Bennyesque though where his promises and success testimonies. Julien Gaudfroy who has reached a native Chinese level said in a post on another forum linked to above that after three years of 24/7 hard studying Chinese, he felt after three years he was only “superficial fluent”. That is the hard truth. FLR will cut no corners for you.
It would be great to be able to sell motivation and inspiration, but that is a bit difficult, so selling a DVD/book based method is maybe the next best thing for Moses to do. I wish he would say a little bit more what exactly his FLR approach is.
Friedemann, forget the disclaimers and just state your views. I promise to do the same, whether you like it or not, although I know you can take it and are not easily put down. I would be disappointed if you became wishy washy in putting forth your views, whether I agree with them or not.
If people want to creat a commercial product, they should expect that product to be reviewed and they should expect themselves and their capabilities to be examined as well. Probably no need for disclaimers, but it’s good to be safe:-)
I like Moses too, but given what I’ve seen of his videos, and his FLR intro videos, I would never in a million years pay $450 for a couple of DVDs and 7 hours of consultations. I can’t imagine he’ll sell a lot of courses, but maybe I am wrong.
With the price of $450, he does not need to sell a lot.
Like I said before, people typically buy the product not just for the product itself, but the person behind it. This is all about personal-branding.
I kind of like the “boot camp” idea when it comes to jump-starting a language. Quite often, we need an initial ‘push’ when jumping into a new language.
i think, if I had a hopeless English learner, I might buy his product. Although I didn’t know for sure whether this method was work, it might be better than traditional method I have used. So Moses would become my role model. (maybe not if FLR wasn’t good enough) However, it had not happened to me , because when I was a hopeless English learner, I found A.J. Hoge instead. His 7 roles of learning English touched me. Later, I found Steve. His method is mostly like A.J.'s method. And now I end up here, A great tools to study Language. I don’t know which one is better. I do know for sure that ‘input first’ method work, at least for me.
I had a quick look at Moses’ web site and was mildly irritated. He seems to be implying that learning languages is hard and a muppet like you or I can’t possibly do it without being shown how (and charged hundreds of dollars for the experience). That seems to be disempowering the learner (ie, making them feel crap about themselves).
What drew me to LingQ, other than not being asked for any money, was the implication that I was perfectly capable of learning any language I liked, here were just some tools, content and a community of nice people to help me. I felt empowered. That sense of empowerment keeps me here, day after day.
If there IS a special method for learning a foreign language without special effort or much investment in time, I certainly haven’t found it yet. I’ve just learned how to enjoy investing the effort and time.
Exactly! We don’t need language gurus to show us the secrets of language learning, because there are no more secrets. Just give people the technology they need (as for example Lingq does) and they will learn on their own. We don’t need FLR or language hacking guides.
I do think though that people like Moses can play a useful role as motivators and inspiring figures but we don’t need their snake oil
Edwin, what is the difference between Moses and Benny, other than the fact that Moses seems to come off more humble to most? They both are trying to make money off their products, but you seem not to have a problem with Moses doing this.
I cannot speak for Edwin but I have no trouble with either of them wanting to sell their advice, know how and experience, at whatever price they want.
The fact that much of this information is available elsewhere is not relevant. Information on how to lose weight or improve your golf swing is also abundantly available yet people buy programs or go to coaches for help.
To me what distinguishes Moses is the following.
Moses does not make outrageous claims. He does not claim to sound like a native. He does not claim that in three months from scratch, he or anyone else can achieve fluency, (which Benny defines as doing everything in another language that he can do in English)
Moses says
"Welcome to Foreign Language Road Running, where you can realize your dream of learning a new language, fast.
However, the goal of FLR is not just to help you learn the language of your choice. We teach through natural, proven teaching techniques to help you become an independent and motivated language learner."
Moses has learned a great variety of languages without the opportunity to live where the languages are spoken. So he has a method that works, at least for him. Potential customers need to decide if this method can help them. Michel Thomas, and other language coaches charge a great deal for their services.
Moses does not get aggressive or nasty in defending his approach to language learning.
Moses has a humble," if I can do it, so can you" approach which I think is inspiring to many people. I might add that Benny is also an inspiration to many people, and in that sense they are both to be applauded for promoting language learning and encouraging otherwise reluctant learners to take the plunge. I must say I personally find Benny’s term “language hacks” irritating with its suggestion of short cuts, but that is only my personal reaction. None of this changes the fact that both are free to charge what they want for their advice in my view.
One thing I noticed on Moses’ site was that he uses video testimonials, 2-3 minutes long. This struck me as more effective than our long list of testimonials without pictures. Would people be willing to create short testimonials in English or their own language talking about their experience at LingQ?