Mark,
how long are you planning to stay in Japan? I would assume that if you are a teacher you need speak Japanese on a daily basis so I am guessing you are getting your fair share of speaking practice.
Okay, I did read his post after all. Obviously, I think he’s wrong.
Kinda funny that he said he didn’t learn much Thai in Thailand because he had too much work to do. Um, hello, welcome to the world of most people on this planet? And he was in the country itself? Wow, talk about excuses. Really, all you need is maybe even a half hour a day, if that, just to learn some words in that period of time. You don’t “have” to go out and talk to people, but what an advantage you’d have. I hadn’t even thought about how badly his Thai experiment worked until just now.
But still, I just like how he encourages people to get out and do it, but I think he could do a better job. I think it’s way more important to just keep moving in “a” direction. That could be conversing, it could be reading, it could be thumbing through a grammar book. There is no way this “silent period” is a waste of time. No way.
Yes, I do use Japanese on a daily basis, but I didn’t do so in the beginning because I was working in a different sort of school. In my first year or two, I remember being kind of hesitant to speak and feeling like I wasn’t “ready”. I probably could have used a speaking “cheerleader”.
And, since my work is fairly solitary, and I do my classes in English, it’s not like I speak Japanese all day at work. Maybe one hour maximum. So, I think I would still benefit by changing my habits and trying to create more opportunities to speak. It’s definitely something I’ll bear in mind for my next country/language.
Anyway, it’s more or less worked out for me. I just lived my life normally, and I developed the ability to speak. But I’ve been here 6 years - that’s a long time.
Are you planning to stay in Japan?
I make that decision at the end of every academic year (March), so it’s decision time again 
I am searching for a school that does not use a grammar-translation approach to language learning. If I find one (and they do exist), then maybe I’ll stay. I have an interview with a school whose curriculum is supposedly based on extensive reading. We’ll see.
I’m also considering a career change as I’m losing interest in language teaching, and it’s so hard to find a school that will just let students read and listen and gradually develop their competence. Unlike Steve, I don’t dismiss language classes entirely. A well-run, interactive, communicative, class can be very beneficial, but only if it’s in the context of receiving large amounts of input. It may be time to put my necktie on and become a “business man” of some sort.
But it may just be time to go to a new country and begin the process all over again, and see if I can do a better, faster job of it the second time round.
Have you seen my skype message? Let’s have a skype chat some time. My girlfriend is visiting from Germany right now and we will be travelling next week but after the 24th of this month I have time.
It seems that Benny’s goal was to make a living off blogging so that he could travel the world - he has followed a “Tim Ferris/ 4-hour work week/become a pro-blogger type” formula to the letter and it has worked for him. He took about a year to develop a following and then released his “books” which have no doubt become an automated source of income. His biggest contribution is in motivating and inspiring people to dare to travel and broaden their linguistic horizons, but I can’t help feeling that it is all a very well engineered plan. His blog centres less and less around language learning (it has been a while since I visited it, I must admit) and I’m sure he will opt for a role as some kind of inspiration motivation guru as the language thing becomes more difficult - after all he only really “succeeded” at the romance languages and German - where he already had a strong base. Otherwise, in terms of language ability, his approach hasn’t yielded better results than most people could acheive with a consistent three months of study from their armchairs. And his blog entries often repeat the same mantra “get out there and dare to speak”…
Adrian, you summerized very well Benny’s goal and business model. And you are right, his blog centers less and less around language learning, e.g. here he tells us that “there’s nothing in homeopathy” … (with video!): The importance of experimentation over blind faith » Fluent in 3 Months
He is a clever clown, indeed.
Adrian hit it right on. This is exactly what I think about Benny’s blog too.
I am perfectly fine with making money through blogging and selling ebooks. But one typical pattern I find is that in order to get more supporters, bloggers usually praise each other and are happy to promote each other, despite the fact that they might have very different believes. What they end up are watered down messages.
I am getting the sense from his recent blog posts that he has watered down his theme of “get out there and dare to speak” to “get out there and just do something…”.
My new mantra is “lounge on your sofa and dare to listen!”
Friedemann: “…he totally dismisses the notion of hard vs. easy language. Like any motivational guru he says it is all in your head, it’s all attitude and so forth. And I can tell you after having learned English, French, Spanish, Norwegian and now Chinese, this is NOT TRUE! Climbing Mount Everest is harder than taking a stroll in the park no matter how much you motivate yourself and no matter how positive you are about it.”
This is a very good point.
A German guy (especially one who also speaks English) will find it fairly easy to learn Swedish or Norwegian.
But the same German guy is always going to find it MUCH harder to learn Japanese, Arabic, etc.