Lessons
Day 1
1Class Introduction
18:18 2The Science of Memory
17:34 3Spaced Repetition
38:45 4Tools of Language Learning
11:30 5The Basics of Anki
29:22 6Analog Methods
17:37 7How to Hear & Form New Sounds
23:03Train Your Mouth
28:11 9Student Questions
22:49 10How to Learn a New Spelling System
39:48 11Typing in your Target Language
20:54Day 2
12Learning Simple Vocabulary
31:07 13Designing Your Flashcards
29:07 14Demo: Learning Simple Words
27:18 15Japanese & Chinese Flashcards
11:34 16Breaking Down Grammar
25:39 17Abstract Vocabulary
22:22 18Flashcard Review
19:14 19Demo: Grammar & Abstract Vocabulary
43:54 20Lang-8 & Assimil Books
23:37 21Making Language Work For Your Life
31:21 22Mobile Language Learning
25:45Day 3
23Study Habits Review
08:21 24Time to Play: Custom Vocabulary
31:11 25Flashcards for Abstract Words
42:13 26Listening & Reading Comprehension
52:54 27Time to Play: TV & Film
17:11 28Time to Play: Speaking Fluently
40:42 29Method Review
29:32 30The Science of Friendship
39:14 31Why Do We Do This?
08:39Lesson Info
Study Habits Review
I wanted to start today before we kind of get into the presentation with some discussion of what we talked about yesterday in terms of habits and things we talked about figuring out where is this review habit going to come? You know, when I'm going to study my flash cards after coffee after, you know, getting dressed in the morning all these sorts of things, but there is another time commitment that we didn't actually talk about yesterday, which is this card creation thing you know, how long's all this take with the computer in the finding the images and all that it's it's usually this this sort of scary thing, you know, this seems like this takes forever like like, do I really have to do all of that? Can you just give me flashcards to sort of talk about that the flashcard creation process generally, if you khun, if you could do all of these steps in terms of making it a sufficient as possible, um takes about the exact same amount of time as reviewing. So if you're going to spend thirt...
y minutes a day reviewing your flashcards, it's going to take you about thirty minutes a day to make those flash cards the nice thing about the card creation time commitment is that for one it's fun, I find it actually a lot more fun than the review process review process is kind of fun, it's nice that you're not nodding because you've actually done it. It's good. The review process is fun because you created them because you get to see the work that you did, but the creation process is really the creative process it's a process where you build this thing in your head and then the review process is you just sort of getting the fruits of that labor. Um, but generally it is about the same amount of time. The nice thing about it is that it's mobile you do, you kind of have to review every day or, like, five days a week, something like that, but creating cards, you can do whatever you want. I mean, what I did. I've actually done it in a number of different ways with french I did it sort of insanely I would spend I'd have, like, a week off of school for some sort of vacation, and so I would spend I think, like eight hours a day for a full week, I'd make a thousand flashcards and study them for a month. I wouldn't make any flash cards for a month that's kind of nuts, I don't recommend that, uh, russian, I did sort of more sporadically, I did it on sundays. I spent a few hours on sundays uh just kind of working through making russian cards in the night study my week's worth of flash cards for that week and then I make some more cards over the weekend. Um, and with hungarian it's become really interesting, I've been taking hungarian as slowly as possible on purpose. I've been trying it sort of in real life circumstances where I am busy and I don't have time to study all the time, and I missed days and sometimes I don't have flash cars to study because I haven't built them yet. I will write that little article and hungarian I'll put it online, I'll get corrections, I'll put them in my flash cards and I'll spend probably I'll do it every two to three days I'll spend an hour every two to three days making flashcards, and that generally sustains my habit in terms of these time commitments uh, actually had a really good question from you, jamiel, which was, uh, you know, I've been talking about efficiency all the way through, you know what? What why? How do I make my flash cards as efficiently as possible? How do I save this quarter of a second by hitting command tab? How do I save a quarter of a second bite, like dragging something instead of copying it like all these little tiny tiny time tweaks to make something really, really efficient on I talked about how I should, uh have generally when you're looking for images for instance you should go as fast as you can because when especially for grammar uh when we're looking for vocabulary you're trying to find out okay, what is the french sense of dog nous what is with this a shia differ how is that different from doc like yeah it takes some time but for grammar and you just need a picture of some student if you're talking about you know the student went to the store like go get some all students some some store doesn't matter you're searching in english who cares? Just get something on you asked me you know what? What if I really like getting good pictures? What if I like like sort of fine tuning all of these flash cards? What if I like making everything perfect and spending the time to make a perfect flash card deck where it's just exactly the way I want it to be uh is that bad and it's like if you enjoy it this then how could that be bad there's this sense of when you tackle anything that's hard you usually get thes offers where it's like we can offer you fitness in ninety days can I offer you fitness in thirty days you can have a six pack abs in seven minutes a day, the seven minute workout, the three minute workout, the thirty second workout you know, just just do this and it hurts a lot, but then you're done like dude once, and what is what all of these these people are trying to do is take something that's really, really painful and say ok, yes, it's painful, but we're going to make it really, really short, so you can kind of endure it and then get it over with and that's fine for short term goals, but this is no short term girl goal you're trying to rearrange the way you think this is something that you want to stick with you for life and also something that's gonna take a while, and so when you said goals of trying to make this a short as possible and sort of speed through, and I want to get fluent as soon as I can, like why what's the rush? If you're enjoying yourself? This is a process where you look forward every day to making your flashcards and you waste five seconds per card getting and more a better image for yourself, but you have fun and you are just looking forward every day with doing your flashcards great, you will get fluid, you will become much more likely to be fluent than if you force yourself to stick to efficiency and make everything perfect and streamlined as possible maybe it will take you longer but who cares because if you did it the way that was uncomfortable you wouldn't actually get there this is about trying to make something that is enjoyable because that's the only way it's gonna work this thing needs to be fun it needs to be enjoyable just from like uh you we want to get their standpoint and you can't get there if you hate it every time it doesn't matter if this is ten seconds of language learned today if you hate those ten seconds it's not gonna work um in terms of what we're going to cover in these few segments actually this segment the next time within that one after that um I call this the language game this is the part where you get to play in the last six chunks we talked about technique we talked about how do you get how do you build this foundation how do you get the sounds into your ear how do you get the sound into your mouth how do you get to get sound out of your mouth? How do you get the spelling system into your eyes? How do you taking that? How do you start learning words? How do you start letting grammar how do you string those words together? How do you get the structure of this language down how do you use flashcards to do this efficiently? That is the main sort of technique that we're using here and you can use this to basically learn the whole languages grammar and the whole languages vocabulary you have the thing you need and once you have that you get to start playing um the next stages in language learning are all play um if you know how to learn grammar and you'll know how to learn any word that you encounter then you could learn whatever you want and so these stage has become very simple in some sense if you want to get therefore make basic language skills there's listening there's writing they're speaking and there's one more that I can think of speaking listening, writing and reading reading is the fourth one uh and for these four skills it's sort of done if you want to read better you should read more if you want to listen better you should listen more if you want to speak about you speak more if you want to whatever the last one was right better you should write more but there are more efficient ways to do that they remove their ways of sort of tweaking things that's become sort of a bag of tips um and so we're going to go through step by step and say okay well sure if I want to learn more vocabulary actual irmo vocabulary but what vocabulary should I learn how is that going to make things more efficient and so that's kind of weird doing today? Um, but generally you have sort of the basic technique down. This is just kind of playing with it. And this is the part where it really gets to bloom. It's. A lot of fun.
Class Materials
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Ratings and Reviews
Nephele Tempest
I really enjoyed this course. Gabe has a terrific, easy teaching style that's entertaining and absorbing to the point where I'm conscious of having gone through the course a little too fast. I am looking forward to going back through it a little more slowly to catch any tidbits I missed, but even without that I feel I have so many new tools to apply to language learning and I can't wait to get started. I really appreciate that he also went over how to tackle a language you've already learned in the past but have not retained to the level you'd like, as well as how to start a brand new language from scratch. I hope to do both with much greater success than my previous attempts.
user-278c98
Worth every penny. Despite the title, you'll learn far more than how to become fluent in a language -- you'll learn how to learn anything you want! Gabe is a great presentational speaker, articulate and captivating. The foundation of the course is about how to set a concrete and measurable goal, learn effectively, and set yourself up for success. This course addresses forming new habits within the constraints of your current life, making progress when you don't feel motivated, and how to recover from setbacks like getting off-track or when you just don't grasp a concept--these topics are often missing from other learning courses so students flounder as soon as they stray from the formula. Building on all these fundamentals, Gabe then offers specific techniques and tools for language learning. Excellent course!
a Creativelive Student
I really wasn't expecting to learn a whole lot of new things with this course but I feel like I have come away with so much more then just how to learn a language. The science on how our mind and memory work was really interesting and also very applicable to other parts of my life. Along with this course, I purchased Gabriel's pronunciation trainer which I also highly recommend. I never thought about the pronunciation of a language as a separate part and I feel like learning this first is already greatly improving my understanding of my goal language. I have tried to learn another language many times only to either give up from frustration or get bored with the program I'm using. This course and Gabriel's method of learning a language have me so excited that this time will be the time I succeed. I can't wait to start using the word list once that is available and to start creating my own. Thank you so much for such a great course.