I tried pronunciation practice at early stage. I even did recordings. It was awful and discouraging. It is scary now to listen back to those recordings.
I think there is no rush. If you’re learning primarily through input, and you’re not yet trying to speak, pronunciation practice can wait. If you are speaking a lot early in your language learning, then it might be a good idea to do some pronunciation practice to avoid creating bad habits.
Interesting comments. My own experience is that (effective) pronunciation practice very much improves (and complements) my listening program, particularly for languages that sound very different to a language I already can “hear”. For example, I had a hard time hearing the difference between a Chinese x sound and an English s or sh sound. Only after learning the correct tongue positioning and how to make the sound, did it subsequently become very easy to hear this sound in a wide variety of dialogues and contexts.
There are sounds that cannot be explained easily. Some also sounds differently in sentences. You just need to listen to the language a lot to identify them.
I take neither side of this discussion, but I wanted to share my opinion about benny.
“Milan,Benny has many fans, but I fail to understand why.”
I have been watching benny for some time. He has a lot of followers; none of us can deny that.
I think it’s because of the unique nature of his blog. It’s a travel blog combined with language advice, whether that language advice is good or not is to be debated.
Following benny is interesting. How many bloggers on the web are traveling around learning new languages? How many are actually able to do so? It’s interesting to see where he goes next and to find out how he has done. Again, whether or not he tells the truth is debatable, but combined with his motivational style of speaking and well-organised blog (in my opinion) he is bound to have many followers.
Lastly, people like to hear how easy things can be. He promotes that he has a magic formula that will make learning easy. This is how Rosetta stone markets its product. Many of us know that in order to learn you have to work hard, but for those that are not experienced in language learning, looking for a secret formula or simply like watching someone travel. Benny is the perfect person to follow.
His traveling to different countries subconsciously implies that he is a success and that he must have the answer.
so in short, I think that benny’s success is more to do with the nature of his adventure and how he presents that information through traveling and his style of writing and speaking.
Having the “magic formula” is something that is all over the Internet. Let’s face it. The formula may be crap but a lot of people stop to listen. After that it’s about holding their attention, which benny does well by having a new adventure every 3 months.
Benny is just a VERY good salesman selling “his magic pill of language learning”.
The point is, this formula/pill is crap, because he himself is not getting “fluent in 3 months”.
But his followers seem not realize this - or they don’t want to face this truth 
I don’t believe in miracles. I haven’t read Benny’s book about language hacking. I haven’t followed Khatzumoto’s 10 000 sentence method. I haven’t recorded myself like Glossika. I haven’t (just) listened for thousands of hours. I haven’t watched TV for thousands of hours instead of doing anything else language related. By the way, I don’t feel confident in any of my current target languages.
“I learned to play jazz saxophone by jamming with fellow musicians”
“I learned to play jazz saxophone by listening to my records”
Whom would you believe? Who do you think reached active skills first?
I don’t think anybody doubts that listening has its merits. (How on earth would we else know how the language sounds?)
I also don’t think anybody doubts that the muscles have to be trained - if we want to use them, that is.
I can see four extremes here:
Active - failure: e.g. those who start speaking early and never get better (regarding accent and/or grammar - call it intonation and musical technique if you want), mediocre comprehension skills
Active - success: e.g those who start early and constantly improve (adapt to surroundings, correct themselves and/or get corrected by others).
Passive - success: e.g. when listening gives a feel for prosody and results in good pronunciation, or reading for vocabulary.
Passive - failure: e.g. those who hope for the magic to appear, and just never get anywhere.
I see these four categories all the time, in many disciplines… languages, music, martial arts etc.
I can’t say that Benny is trying sell his “magic pill” anymore than Steve, Glossika, Laoshu. He only happens to charge for his book.
“Rather than doing an hour of conversation that you don’t understand, it would make more sense to do fifteen minutes of something at your level.” (David Long, the director of the ALG program)
A few comments;
1)There is no dichotomy between active and passive. Anyone who speaks first, and learns through speaking (Benny at his word) is in fact learning mostly through listening, since he does not have the language within him. Anyone who listens is only delaying the time when she starts speaking. Eventually she has to speak, and speak a lot. The only question is when we start speaking. In any case , listening is the major activity for a long time.
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When you promise fluency in three months just by talking, you are selling a dream. If the message were, talk and don’t hesitate and don’t worry about mistakes, that would good advice. When the advice is that input based learning is useless and inhuman, then you are encouraging people to avoid what is for most people the most practical, lowest cost and effective way to learn a language. Most people cannot just jump on a plane and fly to Prague, Rio, Budapest, Berlin etc.
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In my humble opinion Jeff, to be more comfortable in your languages you might try giving yourself intense periods of concentration in just one, say for 6 months at a time. And remember we are never as comfortable in another language, so it could also be a matter of expectations.
“I can’t say that Benny is trying sell his “magic pill” anymore than Steve,”
Really? I am not sure you can compare the presentation of LingQ and Benny’s site. They both sell at some level, but to say that Benny’s product (long “motivational” blogs with learning “tips” interspersed) is not inherently less useful than what LingQ provides seems to be willful ignorance.
In my experience, learning music by listening to records or CDs helped a lot to develop my basic skills but playing with pianists, in orchestras or other saxophonists gave me a chance to have more meaningful feelings. I was inspired a lot by them.
Learning languages is the same thing.
@ Jeff
Thanks for the link to the blog. It was a great read. I completely agree with the author’s point: to improve you must study (or use) the language regularly.
I would never start out talking from day 1, but I definitely only improved my Spanish conversation skills once I started to talk regularly. At my intermediate level I feel that talking as much as I can would be very helpful for me.
“Really? I am not sure you can compare the presentation of LingQ and Benny’s site. They both sell at some level, but to say that Benny’s product (long “motivational” blogs with learning “tips” interspersed) is not inherently less useful than what LingQ provides seems to be willful ignorance.”
I don’t think it is fair comparing them like that. Benny’s blog is a blog designed to motivate people, and that is what it has managed to do. LingQ however, is a tool to be used for learning and isn’t motivational as such, but more practical. If you look at it that way, they are both successful.
Secondly, LingQ is also meant for you to be fully understanding a language, in areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening and thus offers you ways to improve those. FI3M is meant for you to be speaking (and only speaking). So there is logic to what he says, to be able to speak, practice speaking. Reading and listening isnt a shortcut to speaking.
“Really? I am not sure you can compare the presentation of LingQ and Benny’s site. They both sell at some level, but to say that Benny’s product (long “motivational” blogs with learning “tips” interspersed) is not inherently less useful than what LingQ provides seems to be willful ignorance.”
I don’t think it is fair comparing them like that. Benny’s blog is a blog designed to motivate people, and that is what it has managed to do. LingQ however, is a tool to be used for learning and isn’t motivational as such, but more practical. If you look at it that way, they are both successful.
Secondly, LingQ is also meant for you to be fully understanding a language, in areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening and thus offers you ways to improve those. FI3M is meant for you to be speaking (and only speaking). So there is logic to what he says, to be able to speak, practice speaking. Reading and listening isnt a shortcut to speaking.
Yes, James, believe it or not, reading and speaking is the fastest path to speaking. If you cannot get the language in you, you will have nothing to say. Of course, you eventually have to speak and speak a lot, but you need input to get going.
Not sure if anyone has noticed. Benny has a guest post lately from Susanna Zaraysky, who turns out to be an advocate of authentic content and input.
In his comment, he says, "I agree with most of what Susanna wrote here and am happy to promote it. "
Steve - of course you’re using your listening skills in the active approach. Nobody has said anything else (I think?). I’m merely reacting against the kind of religious belief that keeping your mouth shut for a long period will lead to superior speaking skills (which is somewhat stated by the ALG people, which is the foundation of the “TV method”). I have yet to hear an opera singer who never practiced singing.
Dillemme - of course listening to music is good. If you have good ears you might learn melodies by heart. I’ve done that a lot. However by playing along immediately - nothing beats that if you want to get active quickly (this easily transfers to pronunciation skills, and is also supported by speech therapists).
JamesAE - thanks for the “support”.
I wonder how much the “motivated” people at Benny’s blog are actually learning?
Steve, of course you will have nothing to say and I’ve said before that some input is definitely needed, but reading and speaking isn’t the fastest way to speaking. To get good at quadratic equations I won’t be first practising on being able to wrote perfectly in iambic feet. It is an unnecessary step. The same way speaking is different from reading and listening. The former forces recall whereas the other two you can get away with working things out from context. Also, I don’t know how much you like to do in the beginning, but the lengths people go to without speaking is quite absurd. If the aim is to speak a foreign language, speak; if your aim is to watch films in a different language, watch films.
[after thought: don’t know why my thing posted twice but it is probably because I am on my mobile]
Doo- no need for a comment like that. I’m a regular visitor to the site and am learning a lot. Next to me I have a copy of el país which I am perfectly happy with.
What does the site do for you?