The major problem I have with Benny is that he is not doing what he preaches. All the languages he can speak, he acquired them through conventional methods, namely, study + immersion for months. He tried his FI3M method with the newer languages, and he failed almost all of them. He encourages people to “speak their way to fluency”, but he does not reveal how hard he himself studies the languages behind the scene.
He has other problems too, but I will only discuss them if anyone in this forum is interested. Basically, Steve mentioned most of them already.
“1) 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.”
I’d say Moses makes even bolder claims than Benny. He claims to speak now 50 languages when 11 years ago he only spoke one, that is FI3M, 49 times in a row, including languages like Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Russian, Japanese. If this is true I don’t believe he can teach us mortals much.
He describes his method as “unique” but doesn’t really tell us what exactly it is about, when in fact judging from his videos Moses seems to do what we all do: listen, read, write, speak while using modern digital technology. That’s all.
What does “speak a language” mean to you? To me it does not mean fluency. He speaks, and writes an amazing number of languages. He does not say he is fluent nor that he sounds like a native. Obviously he cannot know any of the them to the depth required for full fluency as defined by Benny.
I should add that my definition of fluency is less demanding than Benny’s. I do not perform as well in other languages as I do in English. I cannot do the same things in my languages. I still consider myself fluent without qualification in my strongest languages,because I speak with few mistakes. But in other languages where I am comfortable, I also call myself fairly fluent, including my weakest languages like Russian, where I can sit at a table with ten people, and understand and converse, with many mistakes, where I can read books and understand radio interviews. But I am fully aware of the limits of my knowledge.
I do not think that Moses claims to be even at that level in his 50 languages. But his learners will decide how deeply they want to go. Moses gets them started, and makes them independent learners. At least that is my take.
He need not explain what is unique about his method. His method may or may not be unique, that does not reduce its value. Michel Thomas continues to sell his system, for language after language. Whatever he does ceased to be unique after the first one. Many people still swear by it.
Now as for unique, I really think LingQ is unique.
I’m using the LingQ for 7 months and seven months ago I can’t say anything in english , now I’ve a chace to show to everyone how I improved and how it’s become real and possible to me.
in my opinion in 3 months you can absorve the language and speak something , I mean ,talking about basic things.
in three months you can learn about the language and observe it.
but fluency is up to you and it is obvious that after at least a year.
Speaking a language to me that means to be fluent.
Why is it that after such a long time of intensive studying Russian you still regard it as one of your weaker languages? You seem to have good comprehension, as you said.
Ultimately you have to speak and speak a lot in order to be fully comfortable in a language. I have good comprehension but have hardly had much opportunity to speak. The number of years I have spent with the language do not represent as many hours as I have spent on Chinese for example, and I have spoken a lot of Chinese. My Russian potential is quite high, but it is still one of my weaker languages in terms of speaking ability.
I only use Chinese in this country except with the few people who do not speak it so I guess I will have to concede that I am fluent. My comprehension however is still not where I want it to be.
So the definition of fluent is fluid. You certainly cannot do everything you do in German (Benny’s definition)although I would imagine that you are close to that level in English and Norwegian.
My wife speaks fluent English and Cantonese, but speaks French, Spanish, Japanese and Mandarin without being fluent. But she can manage if she needs to and can even be very social in these languages. So “speaking” and fluent are not the same thing, and fluent can mean many things.
In all my other languages comprehension and output fluency always went hand in hand. For Chinese it is the first time comprehension hasn’t kept up as I would have expected it. Fluency for me is the highest level only second to native level, but there are of course gradings within the fluency category.
For English or Norwegian for example, although both not my mother tongue, I never feel limited by my language abilities in any circumstance. In some cases an expression in English feels more natural and may not even have a counterpart in German. In fact I maintain my Chinese word list in a Chinese - English format.
The weird thing for me about Moses claim to speak 50 or so languages is that it’s only since that claim that he seems to have started on German. And judging by his latest mission, he hasn’t even started Czech or Finnish! Who learns 50 languages but leaves German, Finnish and Czech to last!?
I suspect that some of the languages that he claims to speak are actually languages that there is very little learning materials for. I just find it all rather strange. 50 languages but he seems to just be starting Dutch, German, Greek, Croatian and Czech and hasn’t started Finnish.
"Who learns 50 languages but leaves German, Finnish and Czech to last!? "
Moses does and I can’t see what is wrong with that. People learn languages for their own motives, and those that are motivated learn. Full marks to Moses in my view.
Enough… it’s just that most of them probably learn German and the more common European languages first. And given that some of the materials for the lesser learnt languages are only available in French and German it’s pretty logical to start with them.
@budz888 Why just French and German? There are really tonnes of Soviet textbooks on every single exotic language out there waiting for someone to download them. So, here is one more way
ah, yes!!! I’d forgotten about them. There used to be a Soviet Russian bookshop in Sydney and they had some really interesting stuff. Plus last time I was in Ukraine I bought heaps of modern stuff in Russian on languages such as Turkish and Hungarian and Romany. All except the book on Romany with cd’s. Yes, Russian is also a must. Plus I suppose Chinese for learning languages such as Uyghur and Tibetan.
Having access to more materials is certainly something which I consider, but I’ve not really followed that path. German will be my 4th Germanic language. I’m doing French, but that’s because I like it. Russian will be my second Slavic language. Polish is just so much nicer (to me).
Moses is a cool guy. He’s very into languages, knows what he’s doing, etc. He has one problem though - he likes far too many languages and doesn’t get particularly good in most of them because he doesn’t spend enough time with them. He realises this himself. He has a few which he’s pretty decent at, but many which he can just only use ‘survival language’ (Like Hebrew, Arabic, and some others I’ve seen). He certainly doesn’t ‘speak’ 50 languages, but his efforts are certainly commendable. Also, he has said that his goal is to be able to communicate. For me that’s a secondary goal after being able to read literature (academic and classic).
