One Year Ago

One Year Ago

My name is Aaron Myers and I am a language coach dedicated to helping others learn language more effectively, more efficiently and with a lot more fun. I hope to help you understand a bit more about how I think we can better learn languages through this blog. I would love to hear from you, to hear your ideas and about what has worked for you. I will continue improve this site and will write regularly about language learning. We live in an amazing time for language learning. Let me know how your journey is going.

-December 2, 2010

With that little paragraph I began The Everyday Language Learner blog one year ago this month. I am not sure what I envisioned at the time. I knew that there were a lot of ordinary people out there who wanted to learn another language – or needed to. I had met them here in Istanbul and knew them from my past. They didn’t want to become a polyglot. Most didn’t even know what a polyglot was. Most were not so much passionate about the language they were learning as they were for the opportunities they would have once they’d learned it. Few had any idea how to go about learning a language on their own and most struggled with discouragment.

And so I began to write here at the blog. I try to mix things up with a healthy dose of motivational encouragement, rubber meets the road tips and ideas and education about the language learning process. Much of what I write about comes in response to real questions and concerns readers here send me.

And now a year has passed. It was an exciting year too. The blog went through three themes, I wrote three guides and created The Ten Week Journey. I write a monthly newsletter, have over 200 subscribers and saw nearly 20,000 people stop by the blog in the last year. The blog was voted 13th in the Language Learning Blog catagory contest last spring. This fall I also began hosting free Live Language Coaching sessions once a month which have been a lot of fun. The next one will be tomorrow night at 10:00 pm – Learn More.

Above all of these things though, I hope that I have been able to help you become better language learners, to have more fun and find more success. I hope some of the tips and ideas that I have shared have worked for you. I hope I have helped you regain momentum when motivation has wained.

And as I look at continuing to grow the blog, to engage with you the readers and remain relevant, I would love to hear your feedback. I am a big fan of the phrase “ruthless evaluation.” It is what I need to make EDLL a better place (ruthless but gentle:-). So please, feel free to drop down to the comments and share (actually this is a command!):

The Good. What are two things that are really right on at the blog?
The Bad. What are two things that I could be doing better?
The Future. What are two topics that you would like to see covered in a post?

Thank you so much for being a part of the Everyday Language Learner reading community! Have a fantastic day and blessings on your language learning journey!

>> Aaron

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Please remember that 50% of all sales of any of my guides in the month of December will go to support the work of Blood:Water Mission (Read More) (Learn about the Guides)

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"Aaron consistenly pumps out top quality language learning advice and motivational posts,
and is probably one of the best sources of encouragement you'll come across."
-Donovan Nagel, The Mezzofanti Guild

Your privacy will never be comprimised.

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.

aarongmyers

December 5, 2011 | 9:17 pm

Seriously everyone. Don’t be afraid to leave some Ruthless Evaluation. I can take it. It’s the only way I’ll be able to improve what is going on here at EDLL. Step up to the plate and be the first. Thanks! (You can leave positive comments too!) And what would you like to see added to the site to make it a better resource?

Susanna Zaraysky

December 8, 2011 | 5:01 am

Although I haven’t extensively read your blog, I’d recommend videos of you or of your kids learning Turkish and English. It gives a personal touch. Some people will find you via a You Tube search.

aarongmyers
December 8, 2011 | 9:24 am

@Susanna Zaraysky Thanks for the idea Susanna! I do have a Youtube Channel but I use it for teaching about tips and ideas. More personal stories and examples would be a nice touch.

What do others think?

- mezzofanti
  December 8, 2011 | 9:47 am
  
  @aarongmyers@Susanna Zaraysky I second that.
  
  A little video of your life in Turkey or some conversations with some Turkish friends would interest a lot of people.
  
  I haven’t gone back through your old posts so maybe you’ve already written a lot about it but I’d love to read more about your experiences in Turkey.
  
  Your experiences have the potential to strongly appeal to families who are wanting to travel or learn languages together.
  
  Let people know that spouses and kids aren’t a burden but can enhance the adventure.