Tim Ferris method

[Cainntear]

Some topical reading from The New Yorker and The Guardian:
Better, Faster, Strong

and from The Guardian:
This column will change your life: Is Tim Ferris for real?

Favourite quote: "Ferriss’s more technical passages sound like an Onion satire of a TED talk." (New Yorker)

The thing with most gurus is that most of them really believe their own message, and they genuinely believe that they're doing good by spreading it, so they see the money they make as their "just rewards" and further proof that they're doing good.

In many ways, they're just the same as any average rich person who says "I got where I am by hard work" -- this is such a cliché that the most common response is a cliché itself: "I've never seen a banker who worked as hard as a bin man."

The other danger with many gurus is that the idea of unconventional wisdom often goes hand-in-hand with knowing little or nothing about conventional wisdom -- a fair few gurus out there really know very little about the sphere they're working in, and actually use that as a selling point. If you don't understand the sphere, you can't debate with those who do, and that's when people start to get irritated and the gurus' self-defence tactic of crying "jealousy" or "h8rz gonna h8" comes into play.

[Cainntear]

Judge for yourselves.

I'm not going to watch the whole thing now (I've just had a 10% battery warning, so I can't) but my first impression is that his advice is oversimplification -- his process is built on a relatively deep understanding of how language works, but he's only looking at the superficial part of the process and putting friendly words on it, which means no-one without that linguistic knowledge will be able to replicate the process meaningfully; they can follow the steps mechanically, but their brains won't have an adequate model or schema with which to process the information.

And when I say "relatively deep," I mean "about what you'd expect from someone who went to a posh school", because as I said before, his sentences are inadequate to cover a great many common concepts, so he's definitely not expert level.

[s_allard]

Judge for yourselves.

I watched this video of Tim Ferris learning Tagalog in four days for an interview in Tagalog on a television program. I was very impressed, and I highly recommend the video. Rather than look at the so-called Tim Ferris method, I'd like to focus on how he learned basic Tagalog so quickly. Here, in my opinion are the key success factors:

1 - enlist the services of a highly experienced teacher
2 - live with a host family in an immersion setting
3 - focus on the most common components of the language - the bare essentials
4 - work with a memory expert
5 - focus on conversation strategies
6 - focus on the specific requirements of the interview

The results are modest but great for 3 days. I like it when he says: "A little bit goes a long way." It's something I've always said.

[Stefan]

I think some of you are a bit harsh. Look at the great summary by s_allard and add the more practical recommendations such as flashcards, mnemonics and one page summary. Surely they are reasonable recommendations you see over and over again on language learning sites? The 12 sentences are just to get you a head start so you can speak the language the same day and not intended to make you an expert as someone implied.

You can have objections about the premise for the show but if you changed it, there wouldn't even be a show.

[reineke]

https://criticalmas.com/2011/01/how-tim-ferriss-really-gained-34-pounds-of-muscle-in-28-days/

[mercutio]

Judge for yourselves.

This confirms my Skeptism, if he said he learnt a few phrases that's one thing but to market it as "Learning a language" is silly, the interview was just literally ages phrases and lots of ummm and confusion

[s_allard]

As Stefan has said, I think people are being kind of harsh on Tim Ferris. When you consider the number of methods, packages, websites and language gurus who claim that you will be "fluent" in record time and with no sweat, I think Tim Ferris is quite typical. I'll even say that his approach or method is quite good for what it really can do. It's really for highly motivated beginners who want to get the basics of a language quickly. Let's say a sort of A1. Where there is the hype or overselling is in the claim that you will speak the language "fluently" in a short time.

We all know very well what it takes to learn a language on your own. And I really strongly believe in using tutors and language partners. So, you're not going to get to B2 with the Tim Ferris method. But I don't think it claims to do that. What I do like about this approach and even Benny Lewis and others is that they focus on the essentials.

I have gone on record here as saying one can start speaking French with a tiny vocabulary. This brought me endless grief and derision on the old HTLAL website, and even here. I won't get into the details but suffice it to say that there's a lot more to this idea than just learning the 300 most common words in French. That is pretty useless. But if you look at what Tim Ferris does, it's generally the same idea as mine. The idea behind the use of 12 model sentences is that these sentences will give you insight into the basic building blocks of the language. And you build on this.

This is limited of course. There is only so far one can go like this. But the point is that if you can get encouraging results quite quickly you are more likely to persevere instead of getting totally discouraged by this idea that you have to learn 20000 words, 600 pages of grammar and endless pronunciation drills for at least 5 years in order to speak a language.

[reineke]

as I'm bored and supposedly b1 I am gonna try this in spanish, annoyingly I already think I am gonna get one wrong but I will answer honestly without cheating.

here goes:

(I have eaten the apple.) *bonus/ he comido la manzana He comido de la manzana.
I can't eat the apple./ no puedo comer la manzana No puedo comer manzana.

any spanish experts might tell me how I did,

On my break from Polish studies. Here I go. Enjoy!

I'm not a native speaker or an expert but I like to poke my nose into these things. I believe Mercutio translated the sentences correctly.

He comido la manzana = I have eaten the apple (the apple you gave me a few moments ago).
"I have eaten an apple" is missing from Tim's list as is the difference between I ate/I have eaten/I was eating (the) apples.

No puedo comer la manzana = I cannot eat the apple. That particular apple you gave me as a snack.
No puedo comer manzana(s) = I can't eat apples. At all. I'm allergic to apples.

[Cainntear]

I think some of you are a bit harsh. Look at the great summary by s_allard and add the more practical recommendations such as flashcards, mnemonics and one page summary. Surely they are reasonable recommendations you see over and over again on language learning sites? The 12 sentences are just to get you a head start so you can speak the language the same day and not intended to make you an expert as someone implied.

Nope, sorry, not unnecessairly harsh. Ferris is not a bunch of amateurs on a website, he's a professional. If you're paying for someone's advice, it should be damn well better than something on a website full of amateurs.

When I talked about not being an expert, I was referring to Ferris, not language learners. My point was that he has an above average grammar awareness as a result of his schooling. His example sentences are input to the brain machinery he already has from formal grammar study (but not grammar study at "expert" level). Someone without the abilit to consciously parse, and without understanding of the typical grammatical distinctions in human languages are not going to be able to learn anything from individual sentences, because there can be no repeating pattern in a single example.

Ferris's method takes his internal catalogue of grammatical features and says "you need this one, that one and that one" but it is useless without an equivalent internal catalogue.

This means that he is not teaching his method, so...

But if you look at what Tim Ferris does,

Herein lies the problem, you have to look at what he does for yourself, because it's actually quite different from what he says.

[s_allard]

Really, really, this is a lot of fuss for nothing. Tim Ferris is, among other things, a personal development or lifestyle guru and a motivational speaker. His specialty is learning to doing things very quickly such as losing weight, learning to dance Argentine tango, body-building, etc. All within record time. He came to fame with his 2007 book, The 4-hour Workweek.

The title of this book should give us an idea of his approach. Why work 40 hours a week when you can do the same or better in only four hours? Well, if you read the book, follow his blog, or look at how much work Tim Ferris does a week, you quickly realize that there is no such thing as working only four hours a week. I don't believe it's a scam however. I think it's catchy phrase for selling an approach to doing things very quickly.

To come back to language learning, I'm not sure we should really speak of the Tim Ferris method. I think it's more of a strategy, a sort of quick fix that gives you an initial boost. Like everything he does, he concentrates his energy and uses all available resources to achieve his goal. That's the essence of his Tagalog experiment.

Now, if you think learning a language in four days is a lot of crap, what do you make of the following description of the Paul Noble Institute's two day program?:

Regardless of your current level - whether you speak absolutely none or just some of the language you want to learn - our aim is to have you conversing in it by the end of your two days with us!

All of our language courses are held in comfortable Central London locations and we provide a variety of languages and course types to choose from. We offer two-day French, Spanish, Italian, German and Chinese courses, for those who are looking to learn a language inexpensively and as part of a small group. And, for those with a larger budget, we are also able to offer individually tailored 1-to-1 and business courses.

Unlike conventional language courses, there are no textbooks, there is no rote-memorisation and no lecturing is involved.

Most people who have ever tried to learn a language come out of the process convinced that they are actually incapable of learning one - in spite of the fact that they somehow managed to learn to speak their own language – and this when they were only toddlers!

When students come to learn a language with us, no one fails – that is an absolute promise! If you can speak English then we can teach you to speak another language and to speak it well.

http://www.paulnoblelanguages.com/

Paul Noble is also the author of self-teaching courses for German, French, Italian and Spanish, published by Collins. The advertising mentions notably: No textbooks. No rote memorisation. No chance of failure.

Does anybody here believe that after two days at the Paul Noble Institute, you will be conversing in any of the above languages? Well, it all depends how we define conversing. But let's not get started on that debate. No where is there a specific claim that you will achieve a CEFR A-anything in two days. Just conversing.

I like Tim Ferris's approach and I like the video. What I like is that in all the things Ferris does, he takes an all-in highly focused approach. I believe this can produce very good results within certain limits.