Book Review: Fluent Forever {Blogging for Books}

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Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner*

ISBN: 978-0-385-34810-2

ebook, 336 pages

Publisher: Harmony

Retail: $11.99

About the book:

The ultimate rapid language-learning guide! For those who’ve despaired of ever learning a foreign language, here, finally, is a book that will make the words stick. At thirty years old, Gabriel Wyner speaks six languages fluently. He didn’t learn them in school -- who does? -- rather, he learned them in the past few years, working on his own and practicing on the subway, using simple techniques and free online resources. In Fluent Forever Wyner reveals what he’s discovered. 

The greatest challenge to learning a foreign language is the challenge of memory; there are just too many words and too many rules. For every new word we learn, we seem to forget two old ones, and as a result, fluency can seem out of reach. Fluent Forever tackles this challenge head-on. With empathy for the language-challenged and abundant humor, Wyner deconstructs the learning process, revealing how to build a foreign language in your mind from the ground up. 

Starting with pronunciation, you’ll learn how to rewire your ears and turn foreign sounds into familiar sounds. You'll retrain your tongue to produce those sounds accurately, using tricks from opera singers and actors. Next, you'll begin to tackle words, and connect sounds and spellings to imagery, rather than translations, which will enable you to think in a foreign language. And with the help of sophisticated spaced-repetition techniques, you'll be able to memorize hundreds of words a month in minutes every day. Soon, you'll gain the ability to learn grammar and more difficult abstract words--without the tedious drills and exercises of language classes and grammar books. 

This is brain hacking at its most exciting, taking what we know about neuroscience and linguistics and using it to create the most efficient and enjoyable way to learn a foreign language in the spare minutes of your day.

About the author:

Gabriel Wyner graduated summa cum laude at USC, where he won the school’s Renaissance Award. His essay on language learning for Lifehacker.com was one of the site’s most read in 2012.

My thoughts {well, these thoughts are actually my daughter's, who read the book much faster than I}:

Well, I haven’t learned any languages yet using the techniques in this book… But I’m working on it! ;)

The book starts out with why you should use the techniques in the book. I tend to like the books that tell you what and how, so at first I was impatient. However, the why’s the author provides were interesting, and he always backed them up with research.

Here are some principles from the book, and a bit of the ‘why’s:

The Three Keys to Language Learning:

1. Learn pronunciation first. -This involves what you hear, see, and say. Wyner gave the example his experience with the word scheme. When he would read it, he would pronounce it in his head “sheem”. However, he kept hearing in others’ speech the word “skeam”. Later he did find out the correct word-sound relation (it’s “skeam”); but he said he had a permanent ‘gap’ in his mind. Word situations like that are ‘broken’ words. If you don’t learn to pronounce the language you are learning correctly, you could end up with all sorts of broken words, and it will make it harder for you to understand others. Also, you’ll get a cool accent ;) Wyner says that native speakers are happily surprised when you pronounce their language correctly.
2. Don’t translate. -Learning a new language shouldn’t be like learning a code - you don’t want to have to decipher everything you read or hear. If you try to use as little English as possible when learning a new language, you can begin to understand the words and phrases quickly, without the hassle of translating. You connect the words to what they really are, rather than their English equivalent. You can actually begin to think in that language.
3. Use spaced repetition systems (SRSs). -”SRSs are flash cards on steroids.” Instead of constantly reviewing and repeating cards, SRSs space out your cards depending on how well you know them. By pushing them into further spaces of time, they test the edge of your memory. ‘Tip of your tongue’ experiences reinforce your memory of words.

These three principles are combined into Wyner’s learning system. The technique is largely based on using flash cards. These flash cards use minimal English; instead, pictures take the place of the definition of a word. This way, you can stop thinking “Egao means smile”, and instead think, “Egao means :)”

After telling you why, Wyner tells you how to make the flash cards that will teach you pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.

This book is not a language course. Rather, it is telling you how to make your own language course. So, there is a lot of work for you to do - materials, set up, etc. Maybe that part isn’t so easy; but it’s once you get yourself oriented, know what you have to do, and do it - the learning starts, and it’s fun and easy! By making your own course, it becomes personal, and it sticks in your brain.

Wyner's website, Fluent Forever, has lots of resources to help learn a foreign language. We are using the book and the site together. Wyner is creating pronunciation trainers and word lists for: Spanish (Latin American), Spanish (European), French, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), German, Russian, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese, Arabic (MSA), Hebrew, Hungarian, English, and Dutch (from the site). French is done now and the rest can be preordered. 

We definitely recommend this book for anyone who is truly interested in learning- and retaining- a foreign language. I will say that I would love to have this in print rather than ebook form.

*Disclaimer: I received an ebook version of this book free from the publisher via Blogging for Books for the purpose of this review. No compensation was given. All opinions stated are those of my daughter and myself. See Disclosure/Policies.