I guess it must be full moon again folks! Mr C is back on Youtube with an all new hate-video about Steve Kaufmann and LingQ.
(This time he appears wearing a T-shirt with the slogan: “Beyond Bruce Lee is Clugston”…!)
The more you watch the videos of this guy, the more he becomes famous and provocative.
I think we could discuss more interesting issues.
Theres me thinking that was funny. No harm intended lad. 
The best thing would be to just ignore Christphe Clugston’s videos and not give them extra publicity by quoting links.
Fasulye
@The Brazilian Polyglot
@Fasulye
I disagree guys
Let me be clear: personally I do NOT support Mr Clugston’s views - I find him an amusingly crazy person. However I do believe in freedom of speech. In my opinion people at this forum should be allowed to discuss Mr Clugston and his views if they wish.
I also see no problem with linking to his videos. (Nobody has to follow the link and watch the video if they do not wish to do so.)
For an “intellectual”, Clugston sure seems to hang out with an interesting bunch of people.
Quote: “…My name is Dale Apollo Cook. […] If you have ever seen the Rickson Gracie movie ‘Choke’ you will know who I am.”
Er, no. And I gotta confess I’ve never even heard of “Rickson Gracie” either…! (I just don’t get out enough I guess :-D)
Stu Jay Ray seems to think highly of Christophe Clugston:
http://stujay.com/2012/08/10/christophe-clugston-reviews-stuart-jay-raj-as-youtube-polyglot/
Christophe Clugston can be very agressive and pedant, I agree.
But he has some interesting things to say too !
In its last video, he made 2 points that can not be denied :
- Steve can not learn a language without a script (at least, he can not do it using LingQ)
- Steve misinterpreted some of the input-hypothesis’ concepts.
Another example I have in mind is the Steve’s misinterpretation of the expression “massive exposure to a language”.
When I look at his statistics on LingQ, I have to disagree with him : he never learnt Czech via “massive exposure”.
Anyway.
Everyone has something interesting to say : let’s forget the aggressiveness of C. Clugston, let’s forget the touchiness of Benny, and let’s try to learn to listen to others ! 
I can’t believe you people could snigger at someone who is a Graduate student at Payap University.
@ Imyirtseshem
According to his statistics on LingQ, Steve read about 885000 words since the beginning of his studies, a little bit more than 1 year ago (I’m not sure about the exact date).
885000 words in 1 year is absolutely NOT “massive exposure / massive reading”.
What Steve is doing is called INTENSIVE reading/listening, i.e. read and, especially, “listen to the SAME content, over and over again” (here, I quote Steve from memory).
Krashen’ works are based on MASSIVE exposure, not on intensive exposure.
“Massive exposure” to a language has a very particular definition, and I must say that I am VERY surprised that you don’t know it !
2 bloggers used “massive exposure” to learn foreign languages :
Doviende, from languagefixation.wordpress.com
Keith, from natural-language-acquisition.blogspot.com
To make it short :
Doviende learnt German by reading 1 million words in 6 months and watching TV series (Star Trek, …) for several hundreds of hours.
Keith watched Chinese TV for 2000 hours. At the beginning of his experiment, he was able to understand, at best, only 5%. At the end of his 2000-hours challenge, he managed to understand about 80%.
(I can give you another example : me ! In 2 weeks, I managed to read about 110000 words in Portuguese via massive readings -the stats on my profile do not reflect my studies- The results are excellent.)
The methods used by these 2 bloggers are examples of MASSIVE exposure.
Steve’s method is an example of INTENSIVE exposure.
As for finding for you something interesting/relevant in C. Clugston’s videos : sorry, but you will have to open your mind and do the job by yourself !
(Edit : After some in-depth calculations, I can say that I’ve read (about) 160000 words in 2 weeks)
@ omad84 :
I am not talking about the man (like a lot of people do), I am talking about his point of views.
I think the correct use of the words make the dicussion clearer. But I can adapt…
@ Imy :
“The ‘learn like a child’ mantra tries to divide people into those who use aids like dictionaries, grammar, etc to get into the language vs those who don’t. All those you’ve shown me have either used these tools at some point or are learning languages very close to their own.”
I have a project in mind : learn a language, very unrelated to the ones I already know, “like a child”, i.e via (real) massive exposure, no translation, no dictionary, no other language involved in the process, etc …
Portuguese is just a try, to get used to the method. Then, I will try with German. Then with my (huge) project.
“The biggest problem with Clugston is that he constantly attacks people without strong reasons”.
So true…
“Juju, how about a challenge?”
Why not ??? 
Your description of the process seems correct to me, except for the “babbling” period.
I am experimenting a method to literally skyrocket my speaking abilities, using the target language ONLY.
But it’s still a experiment…
And I am doing it with Portuguese, an easy language for me …
And maybe am I too confident… Ah ah ah !!!
Although his methods of getting his point across are a bit strange, he does make some valid points for me.
Of course, it’s also obvious that Steve is going to constantly try and sell LingQ and promote it over any other method, just like Benny, or AJATT will swear by their own methods and promote them whenever possible. It’s also evident that when either person is interviewed, they will claim that the method they are selling is 100% effect for them.
I used LingQ for a while, but moved on to other things, as the content for Polish was seriously lacking, and the content that was there was already available for free on the Internet elsewhere, and I could import it into a program I didn’t have to pay for. I can get language corrections for free on Lang-8, and the corrections I get are far far quicker, i.e. no need to wait 24hrs, and tutors or language exchanges I can also get for free. It’s probably a bit more difficult to get faster corrections for languages like Spanish or German, because many more people are learning it.
Also, for me, in the beginning of language learning, a little bit of hand-holding helps. I tried to use this site to learn Spanish, but the courses available seem to have no structure, I don’t know where to start, or what to do next, so I gave up with the site and used a tutor and books instead. I’d be interested if someone or Steve could tell me how they actually start of the process from 0 knowledge in a language, to let’s say a B1 level, without hand-holding, and using input, which at this level is too uninteresting and robotic to be of any use.
@imyirtseshem
Indeed, I was wrong to mention AJATT. I only reviewed his site and methods a while back, so I really don’t know enough to comment. I did actually pay for Lang-8 for a bit, as I liked the site so much and was happy to support them. Now I don’t use the site enough to justify a subscription. It was very very easy to find language exchanges through this site.
I would have commented on Clugston’s Youtube channel, but his requirement that I need to have a photograph and realname on Youtube, and that I’m a chicken s**t if I don’t, kind of put me off 
I don’t care about the youtube polyglot (if Clugston can indeed be called a polyglot) wars, but this Clugston character is one person I can’t really stand. I have tried to view a few of his videos, but I can’t get past the first couple of minutes. The guy is just play detestable. Not to mention that his viewing/commenting policy are a pretty good measure of his own respect for others’ opinions.
Apropos the issue about “massive input”: according to Prof Arguelles (a person for whom I have quite a lot of respect) fully digesting the content of as few as four language courses built along the lines of Assimil or Linguaphone would be enough to gain a “base” in any language - i.e. enough to reach a point where one could start interacting with advanced authentic content.
By my reckoning, this would equate to as little as 6 to 7 hours of content.
So according to this, if I were to assimilate fully the contents of Linguaphone Portuguese (the two different editions from 1960s and 1980s) , Assimil Portuguese, and Assimil Brazilian Portuguese, I would have a real base in that language.
I wonder whether that would actually work…?
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Clugston is like a conspiracy theorist. He rants and raves and says the same thing over and over, but there’s no actual content to his rantings. He always promises you “secrets”; what you get are rehashings of other videos promising you “secrets,” which are themselves rehashings, etc. ad infinitum. It’s like an infinite regress of stupidity.
When I see him post a video in another language, then I’ll revise my opinion of him. Until then, a language learner like me has no use for a ranting narcissist (who can barely speak his native language, by the way).
@ Jay B :
“By my reckoning, this would equate to as little as 6 to 7 hours of content.”
Are you saying that 7 hours are enough to “assimilate fully” the 4 resources that you mentioned ??
An Assimil course, for a major language as Portuguese, has usually around 100 lessons.
To “assimilate fully” the content of each lesson, I would need around 30 minutes.
At the end of the course : 100 x 0.5 hour = 50 hours !
Sorry if I poorly interpret your words…
@Juju
No, I mean the actual content would be about that long. In order to assimilate it, one would (I guess?) have to repeat each section many times.