I Learned Portuguese in 7 Days (My Method)

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Cainntear
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Re: I Learned Portuguese in 7 Days (My Method)

Postby Cainntear » Wed Mar 17, 2021 4:08 pm

Steve wrote:
Cainntear wrote:When a bunch of books written by language teachers with years of experience, following established educational conventions, and reviewed by a team of educational professionals get a pile of bullsh*t added by the marketing department, you've still got an acceptable product. One amateur working alone is not going to achieve that.

As I say: marketing is marketing, but product is product.


Institutional inertia and everybody doing the same thing is not always a sign of being good. "Acceptable" is ambiguous and might be preventing the adoption of something much better.

Indeed not, but that doesn't mean somebody standing up and saying "I've discovered something" is an improvement.

Most of the "discoveries" these people claim to have made are quite simply standard practice in teaching, or former standard practices that have gone out of fashion. They are already well documented and described, but it's rare that you'll find any language influencer willing to engage seriously in a discussion of the literature.

And more than that -- language influencers tend to focus on one single feature of language or learning activity as being the "key" to language learning, even more so than the mainstream. Speaking of the mainstream... Rosetta Stone. That was invented by a guy who was neither a linguist nor a language teacher. He "discovered" something obvious: that immersion helps; he built a whole method around one type of activity that he called "simulated immersion" despite it not being immersion at all.


When it comes to internet polyglots and methods, I take particular issue with the Mimic Method and its talk of the concept of "flow". Flow here is just a synonym for the notion of "prosody" from linguistics. Unlike other internet polyglots, however, Idahosa Ness has studied linguistics formally, and I think it's fair to assume he's familiar with the term. I agree that "flow" is a far more learner-friendly term than "prosody", but the way he initially presented the concept was as though it was something new and unique to his method. He's toned down the marketing in recent years, but it still reads to me as though he's hiding information when he describes "flow" without reference to "prosody".
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Re: I Learned Portuguese in 7 Days (My Method)

Postby chove » Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:00 pm

s_allard wrote:And frankly, I don’t think any serious language learner says « Don’t learn grammar ». What they say is more like « Don’t study grammar as a set of abstract rules ».


Oh, I wish they did :|
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Re: I Learned Portuguese in 7 Days (My Method)

Postby einzelne » Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:28 pm

Cainntear wrote:Most of the "discoveries" these people claim to have made are quite simply standard practice in teaching, or former standard practices that have gone out of fashion. They are already well documented and described, but it's rare that you'll find any language influencer willing to engage seriously in a discussion of the literature.


Indeed, there's nothing new under the sun — you build your 'method' by emphasizing one particular skill (or technique), denigrate other 'methods' (since they emphasize another thing) and bang, you a king! There's an exchelent talk on this topic: "On the mortality of language learning methods". My favorite quote: If someone accuses you of being 20 years behind in your methods, just answer: "That's wonderful. It means I'm 10 years ahead of you."
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Re: I Learned Portuguese in 7 Days (My Method)

Postby golyplot » Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:57 am

I find it hard to get too worked up about Benny Lewis, Idahosa Ness, etc. because they were the ones who got me started on my language learning journey in the first place. Sure, they made language learning sound a lot easier than it is, but I would have never tried otherwise.
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Re: I Learned Portuguese in 7 Days (My Method)

Postby s_allard » Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:28 am

golyplot wrote:I find it hard to get too worked up about Benny Lewis, Idahosa Ness, etc. because they were the ones who got me started on my language learning journey in the first place. Sure, they made language learning sound a lot easier than it is, but I would have never tried otherwise.


Well said. I don’t understand why there is so much negativeness around here. I looked again at the video that started the discussion and I enjoyed it more than the first time. It’s really slick and professionally produced. But that’s a good thing. It shows what the technology can do to make watching enjoyable. And I really like Nathaniel Dres's approach because it resembles something I used for German and am using now for Russian.

The problem of course is the title. You can’t learn Portuguese in 7 days. But you can learn a nice piece and enjoy the process. The key takeaway that totally resonates with me is that you only need to master a tiny part of the language to be up and running. I’ve said this here a million times.

I don’t begrudge the Benny Lewises , Steve Kaufmans or the Idahosa Nesses of this world trying to monetize their skills. Don’t we all have a service to sell ? Caveat emptor. These names have all contributed something to our world of polyglottery. And as the author of the video so rightly points out, we are living in a truly wonderful time for language learning. So chill and enjoy the ride.
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Re: I Learned Portuguese in 7 Days (My Method)

Postby iguanamon » Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:52 pm

s_allard wrote:...The problem of course is the title. You can’t learn Portuguese in 7 days. But you can learn a nice piece and enjoy the process. The key takeaway that totally resonates with me is that you only need to master a tiny part of the language to be up and running. I’ve said this here a million times. ...

This is the point of Raconteur's original post. It's titles like "Learn Portuguese in 7 days" that set-up people for disappointment and self -doubt when they don't learn in 7 days.

Zen Buddhism tells us that it's our expectations that make us unhappy. A video like this is disingenuous because the video's author doesn't share the fact that he is an experienced learner with certain advantages. People here who have followed my journey for years would not be surprised if I learned French quickly. I speak Haitian Creole at C1 and Lesser Antilles Creole French at B2. I also speak Spanish, Portuguese and Djudeo-espanyol/Ladino. If I made a video on youtube showing how I learned French/Italian in 7 days, without prominently revealing my language background, I may get a ton of views but it wouldn't be honest. If I titled the video "I learned French in 7 days (after having learned related languages to a high level), I probably wouldn't got a lot of views. At least I'd be honest and not misleading people.

The problem lies in saying that everyone, including monolingual beginners, can replicate his approach with ease and achieve similar results. I find this to be misleading at best and bordering on offering "snake oil" to gullible people, especially people who may have a deep yearning to learn a language but only speak their native language- people who have tried to learn a language before and failed without getting very far. These folks don't yet know how languages work. They're going to find this approach difficult, most of them. On failing, they will be disillusioned, disappointed, and like the OP, angry at being deceived.

All that being said, I will go back and watch the videos when I have more time and I may pickup some tips for learning my next language faster. I agree with s_allard's premise of mastering a small subset of words to go very far with a language in terms of communicating in everyday situations. The more I do this, the more I see that there is indeed value in doing this. This doesn't mean discussing politics, philosophy, or pop-culture in-depth. It doesn't mean that you stop at 300 words! It just means being able to discuss common, ordinary situations we are most likely to run into most often. I may try it myself. I can always flesh out the learning later, if I want to do so.
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Re: I Learned Portuguese in 7 Days (My Method)

Postby Raconteur » Thu Mar 18, 2021 2:02 pm

s_allard wrote:I don’t understand why there is so much negativeness around here ... So chill and enjoy the ride.
Feels like flogging a dead horse, but once again... being critical towards something does not, by default, imply negativity or lack of chill. Just as being blindly uncritical doesn't imply positivity or mastery of Mahayana Buddhism.

negativity
"An attitude that is not hopeful or enthusiastic."
example: There's too much negativity in the world today.

Other words used in this thread (presumably as some sort of argument against it's core premise): "upset" "hating" "vitriol" "jealous" "enemy" "fight"

Forgive me for being nit-picky, but I think we should pay more attention to the language we use (especially here on the language learner's forum).

I am certain that every person on this thread making these questionable implications (you know who you are) is more than capable of making their counter arguments without resorting to cheap, false equivalence. Thanks for hearing me out.
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Re: I Learned Portuguese in 7 Days (My Method)

Postby Cainntear » Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:24 pm

s_allard wrote:Well said. I don’t understand why there is so much negativeness around here. I looked again at the video that started the discussion and I enjoyed it more than the first time. It’s really slick and professionally produced. But that’s a good thing. It shows what the technology can do to make watching enjoyable.

The same could be said for Rosetta Stone's TV adverts though, surely...? Slick and professionally produced, and shows what technology can do to make watching enjoyable. Yet you wouldn't expect us to praise RS for their ads, would you? Surely we're more interested in the quality of learning than the ads...?
I don’t begrudge the Benny Lewises , Steve Kaufmans or the Idahosa Nesses of this world trying to monetize their skills. Don’t we all have a service to sell ?

Yes, but while you and me both have very different views on teaching methodology, we are honest without our students are we not? We don't pretend that what we're doing is completely different from everyone else, and we don't rename standard concepts and techniques to try to stop people realising that they can learn the same stuff from other teachers.

That's why whenever this subject comes up, I specifically call out Idahosa Ness -- all the rest of the polyglot crowd have plausible deniability that they genuinely believe that what they're doing is as unique as they claim it is, but I can't see Idahosa's use of the word "flow" for prosody as anything other than deliberately misleading.

I've called out Benny in the past for repeatedly claiming that grammar doesn't matter despite the fact that he always buries his head in a grammar book at the start of a new 3 month project. How can he say that something that's an integral part of his own learning is not important? Telling us to follow the techniques he uses is an N=1 sample; promoting techniques he doesn't use is N=0. Why shouldn't people call out that sort of thing?
Caveat emptor. These names have all contributed something to our world of polyglottery. And as the author of the video so rightly points out, we are living in a truly wonderful time for language learning. So chill and enjoy the ride.

Consider this: you are in effect discouraging negative reviews or commentary, but still saying "caveat emptor". Isn't the availability of negative reviews a very important part of helping buyers make informed decisions?
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Re: I Learned Portuguese in 7 Days (My Method)

Postby Le Baron » Thu Mar 18, 2021 4:31 pm

s_allard wrote:The key takeaway that totally resonates with me is that you only need to master a tiny part of the language to be up and running. I’ve said this here a million times.

Will a million-and-one times make that true though? I don't think it is. Watching someone else in a slick video also isn't anything close to the effort needed to master even a bit of a language. I think we've all seen that more people watch cooking programmes than actually ever cook. People can blame viewer indolence, but I think it's rather about selling false ideas for the sake of entertainment.

s_allard wrote:I don’t begrudge the Benny Lewises , Steve Kaufmans or the Idahosa Nesses of this world trying to monetize their skills. Don’t we all have a service to sell ? Caveat emptor. These names have all contributed something to our world of polyglottery. And as the author of the video so rightly points out, we are living in a truly wonderful time for language learning. So chill and enjoy the ride.

Caveat emptor, or the art of 'swindling' in common parlance. I have no problem with Steve Kaufmann as languages ambassador, he makes a lot of useful youtube content, though I find his learning website dodgy. He charges money for a service you can actually do yourself with some organisation, but the real problem is that it has loads of pirated content, undermining those creators, whilst he protects his own stream.

So no, I don't have a service to sell in that way. I provide a service that I actually perform after many years of mastering it. Not 'monetising' something simple (and likely not original or even that person's 'property') by reeling people in with a taster, then blocking further useful access by demanding a payment.

There's nothing wrong with charging for language knowledge, but this is a far cry from a lot of these shysters looking for an easy income stream by promising the earth to gullible people rather than promoting facts about the effort involved in learning things. I'm sick to death of the dumbed-down learning culture (in all spheres) which sells a lot of books and promises rather than actual knowledge.
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Re: I Learned Portuguese in 7 Days (My Method)

Postby s_allard » Thu Mar 18, 2021 5:00 pm

To use a phrase I have used often, what is the fuss all about? Here we have a relative newcomer on the language self-teaching scene with some really slick videos and rather outrageous claims. We all agree that you can’t learn Portuguese in 7 days. I would have said something like How to achieve a beginning threshold for speaking Brazilian Portuguese in 7 days. Definitely not very sexy or marketable as a title.

Now let’s look at what Nathaniel Drew did in seven days. As other people have pointed out, he did not come to Portuguese as a totally blank slate. He’s young, good-looking, intelligent, well educated I assume, speaks Italian and Spanish, and already has some Brazilian friends. As a matter of fact, we find out in the very beginning that he already knew about 20 words of Portuguese.

So taking all this into account and putting the misleading title aside, what do we see in this so-called method? It goes without saying that this is a full-time undertaking for an entire week.

1. Step One – Gathering the building blocks. He systematically builds his own list of the essential components of spoken Brazilian Portuguese. What really struck me here was that he had put them into an Excel spreadsheet. I did the very same thing in German.

Drew then enlists the help of a Brazilian to help with the pronunciation

2. Step Two – The glue. Here he focuses on how to put the words together.

3. Step Three – Enter the bubble. Consume art and culture in the language and focus on training one’s ears. Lots of repetitive listening and shadowing

4. Step Four – Put it to the test. Simple conversations with natives.

Putting all the caveats and hype aside, in my opinion, the results are pretty impressive. This is not for everybody but I like the idea of an intensive week of dedicated study to get to the that first level where you feel you have something of a grasp of the language. I'm planning to do something like this in Russian
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