| Fluent in 3 months? Really? |
Before continuing, let's establish that I created this article is not to bash Benny personally in any way shape or form. I truly like his site and he does share a number of great tips from his own personal experience (more on that below). Benny Lewis is enthusiastic about what he does, imagine my passion for French, Italian and Arabic but multiplied onto every language. Taking this into account, I'm still going to share my analysis of his method with my readers.
The Benny Lewis, Fluent in 3 Months Approach:
Benny Lewis dedicates his time to traveling between different countries and learning the local language. His "methodology" basically boils down to one advocating immersion, which I (and many others) agree is one of the best ways to improve your language skills. I have watched videos where Benny speaks various languages, and I'm grateful he shares his progress with us.
The name of the site suggests that by following his methods, you can become FLUENT in 3 months. Although when you don't take this literally, he believes his method can allow people to achieve fluency faster than with other methods such as traditional instruction, conjugations, or intensive input based learning.
As Steve Kaufmann, a linguist suggests: "He is enthusiastic in promoting his language learning activities, makes great claims for the effectiveness of his approach, and yet can be quite prickly and defensive towards anyone who challenges him. This is one of his less endearing qualities." LingQ.
| Well said Judith. Link |
Despite Benny constantly trying to distance himself from academia, he often reacts to criticism emotionally and in the same manner as those high-standing university educators cornered to defend their hypotheses or theories. I think deep down inside, Benny wants people to like him and when that doesn't happen then he and his army of cronies take the opportunity to attack you personally. Benny doesn't bother with people who disagree with him (which is fine if you like to live in a bubble), often handling criticism by simply calling you a "nay-sayer" or a "troll". Which is fine, it's not fun being barraged with criticism.
Why so defensive Benny? Is it because the methodology isn't 100% perfect?
The Problems:
"As far as I can tell, there is only one major disadvantage to my rapid learning strategy, although it’s hardly really a disadvantage if you genuinely compare it to the alternative for the same amount of time: the quicker you learn it, the quicker you’ll forget it."
- Benny Lewis, Forgetting a language: why it happens and how to avoid it.
This makes complete sense, the quicker you learn a language the less you master anything. At least Benny Lewis is humble enough to mention that there's something wrong. Unfortunately Benny's techniques may have a few more disadvantages.
First and foremost, I and many others agree that Benny's definition of fluency is skewed and watered down (no surprise his lax terminology favors his teaching method). According to Benny, fluency is measured in terms of speaking ability, however the level he achieves is rather sub-par within 3 months and not many people would probably call him anything above competent/conversational. As Steve Kaufmann mentioned, if you look at something such as the CEFRL then Benny's 3 month endeavors probably wouldn't get us near B1-B2. You can see Kaufmann's critique in this video:
"Fluency means the ability to converse on a wide variety of subjects smoothly and comfortably. Period. Attempting to water down the meaning of fluency is not helpful to language learners. It is just self-delusion. It has not been my experience that focusing on a limited number of words and phrases leads to genuine fluency, and I have studied a lot of languages. Let's get real."
- Steve Kaufmann, the linguist who knows nine languages
But, Benny is a well-intentioned kind of guy; he wants to give people hope that they can be great in a language quickly. Alas, the problem with constantly spewing that you can become fluent so quickly is that it has the opposite effects. People can become demotivated when they don't make the progress they expected after 3 months. There's research as early as the 1980's which looks at this (Horwitz).
| One of many disgruntled comments on Benny's website. |
Another problem is the access that you have to his method. If you do look at my language experiences, I do take time out of my life to travel to France for extended periods of time because I love the culture. Next year, I plan on residing in France for a year. However, in order to emulate Benny would involve dropping your life (job, school, family, and friends) for a span of 3 months or more, move abroad and only speak the target language. This is not possible for many people. Low and behold, Benny utilizes a "No Excuse" kind of policy for people who complain that they do not have enough time, money, or motivation to try his method, how nice of him. What else is there?
"In my personal opinion, focussing on grammar too much in the early stages is a huge mistake in the academic approach. The priority is to speak as much as possible and you need words and phrases for this, not rules. Study grammar after you can communicate a little and it will be much more interesting and help you “tidy up” what you’ve got."
- Benny Lewis
He says that "traditional" methods do not work. That the information you read on page 312 won't necessarily help you out in the real world, face to face. Although traditional learning methods have served me well, I agree that everybody needs practice to get better at speaking, and the best interactions come from studying abroad & talking to others. Yet, worthwhile conversations require knowing at least some of the essentials to move the conversation along and not annoy the hell out of the native population (those you don't befriend at least). You don't need millions of words, but you need something to pull from.
One of Mr. Lewis's extreme cases involves him studying Czech without having ANY background knowledge. Well in 3 months, surprise surprise, he fails. Where did Benny go wrong?
"This summer I will be spending 3 months in Prague and I currently speak no Czech. Nothing. Right now I don’t know how to say “Please” or “How are you?” or “Where is the train station?” or even “My name is”. I do not speak any language closely related to Czech (such as Polish) and Czech is very different to all other languages that I have learned up to now. Despite this I strongly believe that after 3 months I will be able to say that I speak “fluent” Czech; i.e. have comfortable conversations with locals about a wide range of topics, without a strong accent and with a good enough command of the language for expressing myself clearly in many social situations and understanding as much as possible... I’ve only had a quick flick through a grammar book and a couple of hours studying a phrasebook in Czech (no study since because of work) and I’m already saying a lot more in Czech than I was after my first several months of Spanish study. How am I doing it?"
- Benny Lewis, the man who reinvented the wheel
Yeah that's a great idea! Let's all just hop over to France without even knowing "bonjour" and see how far we get in a language without speaking English at all. Bravo! Bravo! Oops, sorry that's Italian.
It is truly too entertaining to read his blog, luckily we have Benny as our language guinea pig - that way sensible people need not waste resources to realize his Czech method may not have been the best idea. Sure, by dumping yourself into a foreign country without any English support, you will certainly improve your language abilities. If you take your initial language capabilities (none) and leave with something, you inadvertently SUCCEEDED! I believe you will advance more quickly with a nice knowledge base of the language. Whether that knowledge base is 3-months of prior studying, 6-months, a year, or two years... there's no mystical point where you're "ready" to interact with others but having some background knowledge is helpful.
The Advantages:
Benny follows a no-excuse, all motivation style of language learning. He emphasizes speaking with natives from the get go and encourages us to learn a language for the right reasons. Even though he may not have been very successful with his first attempt at Czech, his method still allows him to amass a lot of language experience, friends, and memories.
Some other things about Benny Lewis and his program? He helps language learners build confidence, allowing those who are too shy or anxious to get started speaking. Benny informs us about how to have good body language to better facilitate conversation with Natives, and how to make encounters with natives less "awkward" when you are struggling. He gives tips on how to not speak English when abroad. He advocates using connecting words to make your sentences sound more fluid. Lastly, he provides tips on how to use context, how to make native friends, and how to find work/purpose abroad.
I think the biggest advantage to Benny's attitude is that he realizes you're going to make many mistakes before you succeed, which is what I try to harp upon as well. His tips and comments are great for those who have no language experience whatsoever, or are struggling to find motivation.
I see Benny on Reddit a lot, which I thought was cool. He's just a normal bloke. Not to mention, he's a busy guy but he doesn't mind helping out other people (which is what I end up doing on reddit).
Conclusion:
Overall Benny is a cool guy and I admire his endeavors. Every time you run into his blog he always has something encouraging to say. Regarding his 90-some dollar "Language Hacking Guide", I would probably save your money. I wonder how much he made from people spending $100 a pop on his program thus far. His technique is essentially reading a grammar book, skyping some people and then jumping into the fray, knowing this much should give you an idea of what he does. His blog readers probably made him earn enough money that he can travel the world forever! Congrats to you Benny Lewis, you've achieved something in life.
Benny does one thing really well, that is motivate people to go out and really speak languages instead of only reading and learning grammar.
ReplyDeleteThe problem lies in the fact that his message isn't nuanced enough. For him fluent means that you can have a normal conversation with a native speaker and understand most of what you hear and read. Everyone won't agree with that definition.
Nevertheless, his blog and books are a great resources, Someone following Benny's method could become fluent, and Benny would probably be perfectly fluent in more languages if he didn't learn that many at the same time.
Hey Ben, thanks for your comment!
DeleteI agree with you, his definition won't satisfy everybody (me being one of them). The problem exists because the word "fluent" is an elusive, subjective term.
I don't doubt that somebody can become fluent through immersion, it's just that 3 months seems like too little time to support his claims. I remain skeptical is all.... Maybe I'll follow Benny around on his next endeavor and see for myself hahaha
"Someone following Benny's method could become fluent..."
Delete...or could fail completely. Benny's advice is often so vague and unspecific that you could follow it in a million different ways, most of which wouldn't teach you a language.
A fair review of Benny's work, although I will add that the defensiveness Kaufmann claims of Benny is equally applicable to himself.
ReplyDeleteJust to clarify, that quote by Steve under his video above is a reply to a quote I made on his Youtube video and not about Benny per se. I was trying to clarify what Steve means by "fluency" and he said it's in the dictionary and I should look it up. I found that answer odd because the definition of fluency in a language context is elusive (as you mention above). I think a lot of the friction in this topic could be avoided if people adequately define what it means to be fluent before engaging in an Internet war (which Kaufmann launched against Benny).
For Steve, it appears he defines fluency as requiring a huge vocab whereas Benny focuses more on usefulness of vocab and not being perfect initially over the learning of a massive vocab before you can claim fluency. This seems a bit arbitrary to me because I define fluency by how well I can express myself and be understood, not by the contents of my vocab vault.
For Benny, everything is about conversation. You are right in mentioning that "Fluent in 3 months" can be taken two ways. Benny himself has claimed it isn't a promise but more of an allusion to the mindset of setting a specific goal with a defined timeline. Make it challenging so it forces the learner to really get focused on the process.
I like Benny's approach and I think he brings a lot of commonsense to the field of language learning. Is his stuff the be all and end all of the subject? No, but I don't think he claims that and I think he and Steve come from different schools but ultimately end up in the same place.