Achieve the impossible this summer: Set yourself a (fluent in?) 3 month challenge! #Fi3M
Wondering what
my mission will be this summer? Make sure to follow me
on Facebook,
twitter and
Google+ to find out within a few days!
——–
The summer has begun (at least in the northern hemisphere), so what
do you want to have achieved by September? If you want to make
serious progress in your target language, then I suggest you take the #Fi3M challenge that I’m proposing for people this summer!
In this post, I’ll outline a few of the specifics of what helps me
make so much progress in such a short time, and hopefully get you set on
the path to get busy with
your own challenge!
Le’s get serious about a
real result by September! Who’s with me?? It’s time to
achieve the impossible!
I have plenty of techniques and
my own system of learning a language intensively, but some crucial differences between my language learning challenges and that of the
Average Frustrated Learner include the following aspects of a “mission” that I’d highly suggest you incorporate yourself:
Specific deadline
Thanks to my
very specific deadline, I have to force myself to do as much as possible by that time.
The problem with a deadline of
one year or something along those lines is
Parkinson’s law that work expands to fill the time allotted to it. Without any pressure you will simply learn too slowly.
I say
set a deadline that is ONE, TWO or THREE months from now and work your ass off until then.
Absolute priority
I’m not trying to learn a language while also training to run a
marathon and becoming a chess master and working on getting a job
promotion and planning a wedding and writing an autobiography and
quitting smoking and dramatically changing my diet etc. etc. all
simultaneously.
Each one of these projects is an immense task in itself and
definitely requires your focus. Don’t do too many things at once; it’s
best to have 30-day (or in my case, 90-day) challenges with one key
aspect of your life you want to work on. If you spread yourself too
thin, you won’t achieve
any of the many big challenges you set yourself. It may
seem more
efficient to do them all at once, but if you pace yourself and have one
major goal that you focus on at a time, then after a few successive
challenges you can change your entire life!
I especially like how Leo Babauta from the website
zenhabits, has made a huge number of
important and incredible positive changes to his life. The way he did it was to focus on
each challenge one at a time, and make that his priority. After that it stuck for when he was focused on another challenge.
Focus just on your language learning project if you are serious about it, or focus on the other priority instead
first so that you have less distractions when it’s time to learn the language.
Very specific end goal
Another important aspect of my missions is that I’m specific about
what I aim for, and it tends to be the most controversial aspect of this
site that drives so many people crazy.
And I mean it. Be VERY specific. None of this “learn Spanish”
nonsense. Aim for conversational, (precisely defined) fluency, read a
novel only consulting a dictionary twice per page, being able to hold up
a telephone conversation, whatever it may be. But aim for that and
always have it in mind and make sure it’s ambitious!
Aiming safely within your limits is for SISSIES – I say
be ambitious and push yourself to the max. “Failure” should
always be an option; it’s the only way to achieve something great. If it were a sure thing
then it wouldn’t be a challenge.
One thing I happen to like, is to scope my levels based on the Common European Framework of References for Languages,
that I discussed here.
If it helps motivate you, you can sign up for an exam if a testing
institute will be accessible for you in a few months, and a language
qualification is something you care for.
For Chinese, I aimed for spoken level C1 [advanced] (which I still think is possible in a short time, if I were to eliminate
the mistakes I made), and in the end I have ended up with a spoken
level B1
(lower intermediate) instead. If I aimed for this level from the start,
I would have seen it in sight much sooner and eased off, rather than
have 3 months of
painful, but productive, work
, and I ultimately would have gotten lower.
There is no pass or fail in the non-academic world when it comes to a
means of communication (that’s
what a language is, not a list of grammar rules and vocabulary), when
you truly push yourself there are only various degrees of success. The
only true way you can fail is if you are not pushing yourself to your
limit.
But what should you aim for? It depends on the time that you can
invest in the project; i.e. if you can do it for a large chunk of your
day (40+ hours per week) over 3 months, then I’d personally recommend
pushing yourself to a
very high limit, such as: (see this Wikipedia article to understand
what these terms represent)
| Starting Level |
0 |
A1 |
A2 |
B1 |
B2 |
C1 |
| Target Level |
B2/C1 |
C1 |
C1/C2 |
C2 |
C2+ |
Sound like a native |
On the other hand, if you have up to 20 hours per week you can invest in it then the table below could be a good guide.
This is a pitiful
less than three hours per day, which is a
minimum for something that you should be serious about, so I’ll hear
none of these excuses that you have no time.
MAKE TIME! Stop watching TV or clicking away on Facebook for hours on end, and make sacrifices.
There’s a huge difference between “working hard” and changing your lifestyle entirely such that the project
takes over every free moment, including chances to socialise and relax in your mother tongue.
If you have the time to read my ridiculously long blog posts, then
you DEFINITELY have three hours per day that you could dig out and use
more efficiently
In that case, aim to go up at least one, preferably two levels, along these lines:
| Starting Level |
0 |
A1 |
A2 |
B1 |
B2 |
C1 |
| Target Level |
A2/B1 |
B1/B2 |
B2 |
B2/C1 |
C1 |
C2 |
If you are wondering how you should change this based on
how hard your target language is, then you are wasting precious time. EVERY language is hard, and every language is easy
depending on how you look at it. Get over it and get busy!
If you think you have any kind of advantage, like knowing a similar
language, then the only thing you should do is adjust my suggestions to
be more adventurous.
Don’t play it safe. Many excuses can creep in until you’ve reduced your challenge to a minor hop.
The rule is simple:
aim higher than you probably should.
If you spend any time pondering over silly irrelevant details, then
that’s time taken away from actually making progress in the language.
This is how I do it. I aim as high as I do because that ridiculously
high target forces me to improve at a rate that allows for wallowing
around
plateaus to simply not be an option.
Public accountability
One of the other huge pushes that help me a lot is that I announce my
mission to the world (and since my site’s audience is always growing,
that’s even more mounting accountability with each mission!)
Note that this accountability can be just as effective when a few hundred eyes are on you.
Starting a blog
is great way to do this, although getting more than a few dozen people
to read it over your first few months can be quite hard. Luckily now I
have a much better option for you!
Go to the
Fluent in 3 months forums, which now has
over 7,000 members with
many active posters, who are incredibly supportive and helpful. You may
run into some problems in your project, and you can rest assured that
someone in the community will step in and give you some advice! Many
readers have read most of my blog or Language Hacking Guide and are
fully aware of what I’d say, since I can’t reply to most posts myself,
and many times have their own wisdom to throw in based on much more
relevant experience than I may have.
After you’ve created an account (click
Register if you haven’t one already), go to the section of the forum which is there specifically for
announcing your language mission, and write your background, motivation and specific goals.
This way the entire Fi3M community can check it out and join along with you on your quest! Learning a language
with a community to support you is very different to doing it alone!
You can embed video updates (
which I’d highly recommend making
throughout your mission if it has a spoken focus), and otherwise edit
your posts on an advanced forum platform (many other active language
learning forums I am aware of use outdated, cumbersome and
non-user-friendly forum technology).
As well as regularly updating your mission page, make sure to search
the forum for people with missions similar to yours or discussions about
your target language, because there may have been a relevant list of
resources or steps to take shared.
On the same forum you can get in touch with native speakers
for a language exchange, and when logged in you will see a
bar at the bottom of the screen which lets you chat to other Fi3M visitors also logged in. This bar has advanced capabilities that include live
type chat, video/audio chat, games, language specific group chats, mobile support etc.
Make your language learning mission
interactive and do it along with a community of others also with their own challenges!
X in 3 months? Get started!
The point of the title of this site isn’t that I have a secret formula for fluency in 3 months, but that I
challenge myself
to get fluent in 3 months, or some other very specific target in the
same spirit. This is what I hope many of you will get into yourselves!
The reason it can “take years” to learn a language is not because it has
to, but because you are not doing it intensively.
It’s the hours that truly matter, not the years.
If you set aside those three (or ideally, much more) hours per day
this summer to really dive into your project, then you will make huge
strides ahead!
Your challenge doesn’t have to be
fluent in 3 months, and it doesn’t even
have to
be 3 months. Make it 2, or 6 – whatever you know is a short enough
timespan to be something you see on the immediate horizon, and make your
goal HIGH and ambitious. Try your damnedest to get it all the way to
the end, remembering all those you promised that you would!
And if after those three months, you are “only” 80% successful, well
then won’t that be something to be pretty damn proud of too! You’ll have
definitely jumped up a level in your target language! The only way you
can truly fail your mission is if you did not pour your heart and soul
into it.
So, who is up for the #Fi3M challenge this summer? Let’s see your
missions on the forums, or if you blog elsewhere let us know where
you’ll be writing about it in the comments. I’m looking forward to
seeing what you can come up with by September!
***********************
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This article was written by
Benny Lewis
Comments: If you liked this post or have anything to say, please leave a comment! I love reading them 
You don’t even have to write in English! I will reply to all comments in any language listed on the right with the flags.
Just keep in mind that I’ll delete any comments that:
1. Are unnecessarily nasty and mean to me or any other commenter or otherwise totally inappropriate.
2.
Are irrelevant to the particular post they follow, or leave a link to a
site that is totally irrelevant or are clearly spam. If you have a general language learning question, please ask it in the forums.
3.
Use a commenter name of a business or brand instead of a human being or
a spammy temporary disposable e-mail service, or a clearly fake
address.
But that’s not you, so don’t worry! Can’t wait to see what you have to write… don’t be shy!!
Pakistan
is touring South Africa in 2013 for playing complete cricket series
which consist of 3 test match series, 2 twenty match series and 5 one
day match series and this complete series will continue from 1 Feb to 24
Mar. This bilateral series is the part of the future Cricket programs
prepared by the International Cricket Council (ICC). Pakistani team will
move into series with confidence as they win test series over Kiwis
while visitors will also move into series with confidence after their
success in one day series against India in India recently. The tour will
start with four day practice match in east London and after that first
test match between Pakistan and South Africa will start on Friday, on 1
Feb at The wandered Stadium, Johannesburg at 10:30 local time. After the
first test match second test start from Friday 14 Feb to Tue 18 Feb at
Super Sport Park in Centurion. The third test match will play from Fri
22 Feb to Tue 26 Feb at Super Sport Park in Centurion. After the test
series T20 series will start in which 2 T20 matches will be played at 1
Mar and 3 Mar. In the end, one day series will be played between
Pakistan and South Africa which will start from 10 Mar to 24 Mar during
which five one day matches will be played at different locations in
South Africa. Among five days match second match is day & night
which will play at Super Sport Park in Centurion at 14:30 according to
local time.
India retained Kabaddi World Cup title by beating Pakistan 59-22 in the final.
Manchester United stayed in control of the English Premier League by beating Sunderland 3-1.
Monterrey defeated Al-Ahly of Egypt 2-0 to capture third place.
Clarke's call was backed by his bowlers who captured important wickets.
