The Language Matrix

[jeff_lindqvist]

This video appeared in my feed:
TEACH YOURSELF Any Language with this Method


(Duration 6:32)

OK, we have seen the kind of title before. Yet I had to watch the video. It looks like a topic based approach, with a lot of questions and answers. Someone with experience of FSI, DLI etc. will find this familiar. Maybe also those who have dived into the idea of language islands. (YT channel here)

Anyway, the fellow (whose name is Tony Marsh) has a website - The Language Matrix and there it says:

Language Teacher, former US Air Force Arabic Cryptologic Linguist and creator of the Language Matrix method.

Is anyone here familiar with the method (or the teacher)? (Perhaps someone with, say, military background.)

[ryanheise]

It looks like a combination of familiar ideas (language islands, focusing on what you want to say, playfully recombining verbs, ...). Obviously, not a complete system, but a particular way to combine a few good ideas into a particular routine, while you would still need other routines and other good ideas to complete the picture.

The one thing that wasn't communicated in this video is how he's pulling the example sentences for his matrix out of thin air. I checked another video on his channel, and he did it by typing in what he wanted to say in English and got ChatGPT to translate that into his target language. He then figured out what was the verb and went from there.

Edit: Here's a Reddit post showing how to automatically fill in the translation in Google sheets using the =GOOGLETRANSLATE() formula.

[Cainntear]

OK, we have seen the kind of title before. Yet I had to watch the video. It looks like a topic based approach, with a lot of questions and answers. Someone with experience of FSI, DLI etc. will find this familiar. Maybe also those who have dived into the idea of language islands. (YT channel here)

Anyway, the fellow (whose name is Tony Marsh) has a website - The Language Matrix and there it says:

Language Teacher, former US Air Force Arabic Cryptologic Linguist and creator of the Language Matrix method.

i.e. he will almost certainly have used the DLI and/or SLI stuff, and may have... hang on...

you will learn using the method I created teaching the FBI, Navy, and NATO

...taught using them too...!

As far as I can tell, he's trying to tell you how to make your own materials that are superficially similar to FSI/DLI stuff, but he's only telling you enough so that you'll pay him to tell you more.

As far as I can see he's just trying to wow people with stuff that looks fancy to get them thinking "how do I do that?" so that they'll pay him to tell them how to do it. There's a bit of a double bind with internet marketing: how do you prove you know what you're talking about without giving away the valuable secret you're trying to sell? I personally think he's talking about superficial activities anyway -- he's talking about what's worked for him and a bunch of students who have been preselected to think the right way to use the materials given. People who are naturally inclined to do the superficial activities in the same way using the same approaches will all succeed, but he's not trying to sell his wares to people who have degrees in language and have gone through military language battery assessment.

He's convinced in his methods because it worked for his students, but there's a selection bias in there.

[Le Baron]

He's convinced in his methods because it worked for his students, but there's a selection bias in there.

And the false logic that: 'this worked in a specialist setting with highly-controlled variables, professional instructor guidance, external motivation, therefore it will work for you as a self-learner somehow doing the same thing.'