Fluent forever: how to learn any language fast and never forget it

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Language
English

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • For anyone who wants to learn a foreign language, this is the method that will finally make the words stick. “A brilliant and thoroughly modern guide to learning new languages.”—Gary Marcus, cognitive psychologist and author of the New York Times bestseller Guitar Zero 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—and here he wants to show others what he’s discovered. 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.  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.

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Contributors
Wyner, Gabriel Author, Narrator
ISBN
9780593797495
9780385348119
9780385348102
9781666591637

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Kirkus Book Review

The creator of the popular language-learning website Fluent-Forever.com debuts by putting between covers the essentials of the program that he and myriad others have found helpful.The author is indeed a buoyant, ebullient Harold Hill of a salesman (no dour Willy Loman here!). Throughout his textwhich includes many self-help design features, including text boxes, bullet points, illustrations, chapter-end reminders and key pointsWyner reminds us repeatedly about how enjoyable his program is. About the vocabulary cards he recommends, he writes, Youll discover that theyre a lot of fun to create and a lot of fun to review. Thats certainly debatable. The authors program does make use of many sensible and even revolutionary methods for learning a languageprincipally, the use of visual and auditory reminders of the vocabulary and grammar a novice needs to learn. The more senses involved, the more certain the learning and retention. Wyner also slays a few hoary dragons that continue to dominate lots of classroom instruction: learning vocabulary in clusters of related words (he proposes that learners begin with the 625 most common words), studying grammar in isolation, translation exercises (he advises using only the new language). His arguments and justifications take a little over half of his text; the remainder he calls The Toolbox, and here he gives very specific advice aboutand illustrations ofhis flashcard techniques. He also recommends the heavy use of Google Images and other online visual and auditory aids for beginnersespecially sound clips of native speakers. He urges that learners would benefit from mastering the International Phonetic Alphabet early in the process, and he provides a host of appendices, including the International Phonetic Alphabet Decoder.A sensible approach that nonetheless requires a substantial commitment of time and energy; as the author well knows, there are no shortcuts to learning anything worthwhile. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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