I Am Not Dr. Arguelles

As a language coach and a learner myself, I am always on the look out for new ideas, new methods and new tips to both use myself and to pass on to you. That said, I’ve come across some pretty interesting ideas. Youtube is filled with videos about language learning, both how to videos like my own and videos teaching about particular languages. There are also a lot of videos produced by polyglots, people who speak many languages. Some are amazing: Richard from England tells you how he learned 16 languages – in each language! But much of what is out there is complex, techy and a little over the top for the everyday language learner. Most of us don’t aspire to be language learning super heros like Richard. We just want to learn a language. I was reminded of this again when I watched a Dr. Arguelles (who speaks over 30 languages) talk about his regular “routine.” Here is the beginning of his day:

Write two pages of Arabic

One hour of Arabic activities

Write two pages of Chineese

Read fifteen minutes of Persian

Write two pages of Russian

Read fifteen more minutes of Persian

Fifteen minutes of grammatical exercises in Turkish

Write two more pages of Arabic

Fifteen minutes of pattern drills in Swahili

Write two more pages in Russian

And that is just the beginning. For most of us, reading about people like Dr. Arguelles is interesting, but no more. They inspire us in some strange way, but we will never aspire to be like them. My desire with The Everyday Language Learner then, is to mine the internet, the books on language learning and the blogs and youtube posts of polyglots like Richard and Dr. Arguelles for the takeaways that the everyday language learner can use.

One takeaway from Dr. Arguelles video – he never does any language activity for more than about twenty minutes before he moves on to something else. This is helpful for me and my busy life of work and family. Studying in short chunks a few times a day is much easier to wrap my mind around than is finding a dedicated hour to sit down and focus on language learning. Keep checking back and I will continue to unpack and deliver great ideas from folks like these. And if you haven’t yet, be sure and sign up for the Everyday Mailer, my monthly newsletter, one part of which will be a collection of the months best blog posts, articles and videos from around the web.

And check out the Everyday Language Learner YouTube channel.

image: Dr. Arguelles Homepage

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"Aaron consistenly pumps out top quality language learning advice and motivational posts,
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Steal My Blog

I have a problem.

My blog is an exclusive club where members only are allowed in. The secret password is the English language. If you don't have it, you don't get in. This is a problem because I believe that information about independent language learning should be available to those who need it most.

There are people all over the world who are desperate to learn English.

Desperate because mastering the English language will open up new doors of opportunity for them, for their families. But they don't know enough English yet to access my blog and learn how to be independent language learners. So they are stuck. Stuck in the systemic ineptitude of outdated and broken national education systems. Thy are held hostage by expensive language school that have stepped into fill the void. They stand looking down two roads: one an ineffective system; the other an expensive system. But there is a third way. They can harness the power of the Internet and an increasingly shrinking world. They can do this if they know how. Independence from the system is possible, but a revolution in language education needs to take place.

Will you join me?

Will you join the revolution?

Step 1: Steal my blog. Create your own blog. Take the ideas from this blog, translate them into your language and share them with your people. Begin to preach the good news of the third way - the independent way. Begin to empower and teach and give tools to those who desire to learn language. Step 2: Steal The Ten Week Journey. This is an email series that I create to walk beginning language learners into the life of an independent, self-directed language learner. I'll walk you into how to set this up with a free email subscription company. It's pretty easy. Step 3: Steal my books. They aren't the greatest books ever written but they were created to break down the old paradigms of teacher directed learning and introduce and explain self-directed learning. I'll give you the books if you can gather a group of friends around you who will work to translate them and then spread them like a wild fire through Facebook and Twitter and Myspace and email and whatever the people of your nation are using to communicate. Use them to direct people back to your blog. Use them to introduce the people of your nation to these ideas. Use them to break the chains of a broken system and set language learner's free to learn on their own. Interested? Send me an email and let's talk. aarongmyers @ gmail.com

Credit and Payment

I'm not asking for either credit or payment. While I think it would be great if you would let people know that what you are sharing with them was originally written by me, I'm not going to tell you that you have to. I also don't want any payment from you. Now, if you want to add an affiliate link on your site to my books (English versions) that I do sell, you can sure do that and then you would get 50% of the profit as well. So in that sense, I'll be paying you. I am mostly concerned with a world that continues to use a broken and outdated system that is effectively locking millions of people out of the advantages of learning another language.

Why Am I Doing This

I want to do something big with my life. I want to make a ruckus and be a part of tearing down broken systems. I don't wear a cape though and I have no super powers. So I need to assemble an army of other like minded people to wage the battle with me. I'm not the first to give away my content. Leo Babauta has been doing it for a while and he has one of the most widely read blogs in the world. I think we can start a grass roots movement of free information that a new system for language building can be built upon. But the important word here is WE. We can do it together. Let's get started.

SarahKB

March 15, 2011 | 1:17 pm

Hello, I’m an EFL teacher and in our coursebooks exercises are designed to follow on continuously, and our lessons last for an hour and a half. So this seems to suggest that we should focus on the same grammar / skills points over and over.

But I was glad to see this article with the 20-min idea, as I’ve been trying in recent lessons to mix things up more. A sudden exercise using completely different grammar or vocabulary definitely keeps everyone on their toes.

It also reminds me of when I was revising for exams at school – the advice then was to switch topics often. Partly to stop you getting bored but also just to flex and challenge different parts of your brain. And I suppose a lot of language learning can be seen as ‘revision’? I also think it can be a good confidence boost for students to realise how much they already know, and make new language connections.

Really interesting site, I look forward to reading more.

aarongmyers
March 15, 2011 | 5:11 pm

Sarah,
Thanks for commenting. I am really interested in thinking about how to make our foreign language and our ESL classrooms more effective and more fun. I found your blog today and look forward to following your journey as well. And thanks for being a teacher. Your investment into their lives is so much bigger than just the language you teach them.

Ich bin nicht Dr. Arguelles | Sprachausdauer.de - täglich Sprachen lernen

March 2, 2013 | 5:21 am

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