Interview with Babel No More author, Michael Erard

www.everydaylan...
I had the privilege of interviewing Babel No More author, Michael Erard. We talk about the book but also he shars loads of good insight into learning languages that will be helpful to all.
You can buy the book at Amazon: amzn.to/V1nRdy
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[@postnucleargnome]

Thank you! Muchas gracias!

[@aarongmyers]

I was super excited to be able to interview Babel No More author, Michael Erard.
Great interview!

[@iNBungs]

good interview!
it worked well as a companion to the babel no more book
great job

[@laurarodriguezodwyer1065]

Excellent material, Aaron. Very insightful. Thanks a lot!

[@aarongmyers]

Michael was great to talk to so it was a lot of fun. Have a Merry Christmas!

[@rmsabo]

Awesome interview! Great motivation for my language-learning goals. Thanks so much for this!

[@aarongmyers]

Thanks so much!

[@mcagnin01]

Very interesting stuff, really good questions... Thanks

[@prepped]

very good interview.

[@mezzoguild]

Great stuff, Aaron!
Thanks for this :)

[@rmsabo]

There are plenty of Hmongs in the Twin Cities, MN. Plenty of resources there.

[@betavulgaris7888]

I agree with Retinend in the comments. You just have to DO IT. So many people ask pointless questions in language learning forums. How do i do X? How do you do Y? What matters is getting input of any kind, every single day. Don't care what anyone says, there is no drawback to studying alongside comprehensible input. Learning the grammar from a book bit by bit to explain WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW (for example, learning why you sometimes say au and sometimes say aux in French) is going to make you better than simply trying to figure out when to use them differently.
There's such a downer on grammar study, and i used to be that person, until i figured out that grammar should supplement your current level rather than trying to teach you something about material you know nothing about. (eg, trying to teach you the differences grammatically between au and aux when you don't know what either means is stupid, and most online 'lessons' try to do this if they're grammar-based approaches.)
Adults complain they can't learn a language and that's for only one reason - they're lazy. If you can't learn a language you're not spending enough time on it. Simple. If you, after work, school, kids, shopping, travel etc only put in an hour a day, and half that hour is actually worthwhile (practice and good practice are different) then you have the weekends off because you've earned it, you're getting 2.5h a WEEK of that language, which is nowhere near enough if you want to be good at it within the next 10 years. It's the equivalent of living a language for three working weeks.
You need roughly 4-6000 hours to become extremely good at something, and 10,000+ to become an expert. At half hour a day that would take you just under 80 years.
Now take your 2 hour commute everyday and listen to the L2 intently for as much of that time as you can. Like actually listen to it. Switch everything you read to L2, let's say you read for 30 mins a day, online and in print. You watch an hour of TV a day? Watch it in the L2 and listen intently. Know how to say 'can i have a cup of tea?' in the L2? You should always be using that phrase in the L2 when you want to ask for something. Then spend a couple of hours a week making up games to learn vocab, and a couple of hours figuring out subtleties in where you're going wrong with grammar. This could all add up to 20+ hours a week of input/output/learning and half the time you're not even having to make EXTRA time for it, you're just doing your normal thing but incorporating the L2.
You'd be an expert in 10 years, or even maybe a lot less as the snowball effect of building on previous knowledge makes future study a lot easier.

[@LiamPorterFilms]

19:08 is A very wise point. There are no miracles - it's about repitition repitition repitition. It's accepted that this is how you learn an instrument .... it's no different for any other skill. Motivation is the key. "Methods" should be efficient, but if they're painstaking and boring they will never be maintained. Also I think that there is no getting around the fact that anything less than DAILY study is not enough. The publishing industry is not good at communicating this.