He talks a lot about encouragement so maybe this is his way of going about it. Maybe he purposely sets the bar low so he makes everyone feel like they could do better, and thus they become encouraged. Maybe this was the plan all along....
whoa.

[RawToast]

Tzadeck Wrote:Yeah, I really don't get the super-negative reactions to this video. Doesn't make any sense to me at all.

For me, this bit does it:

Quote:This video was scripted in advance but I still made a few mistakes (indicated in the video when it happens)

For GCSE I could read Spanish from a script all day long, but I couldn't actually speak the language.

youasuki Wrote:

egoplant Wrote:Or maybe he's just learning a language and recording his progress. Please stop with the dumb conspiracies.

Disagreeeee.

How come?

egoplant Wrote:

youasuki Wrote:

egoplant Wrote:Or maybe he's just learning a language and recording his progress. Please stop with the dumb conspiracies.

Disagreeeee.

How come?

He's clearly not -just- learning a language and recording his progress. He makes money off of his language learning efforts. It's all part of promoting his site: http://www.fluentin3months.com/

Is he -also- genuinely interested in learning languages and communicating in them? I'm sure he is. The financial rewards couldn't possibly be worth it if he didn't enjoy learning languages as an activity in and of itself.

However there's no 'just' about it. There's a definite PR angle.

Let's be honest it is impressive that he did this after a week. And this video is motivating to me to go practice speaking japanese more and not be embarrassed when i make mistakes. He's accomplished his goals for at least one learner here. So thanks Benny.

@egoplant First, kudos to him. He's bold. But I'm just pointing out that I smell (not total) dishonesty from him. Of course beginners make mistakes, but I've seen hundreds of beginners and the mistakes he makes smell fishy.

NoSleepTilFluent Wrote:Let's be honest it is impressive that he did this after a week. And this video is motivating to me to go practice speaking japanese more and not be embarrassed when i make mistakes. He's accomplished his goals for at least one learner here. So thanks Benny.

You do know that everything is scripted right? Sorry, but I fail to see anything even remotely impressive at all there. The one impressive thing about Benny is his epic boldness to attack speaking from day one. That's a lesson for those of us who may still be lacking in that area.

youasuki Wrote:@egoplant First, kudos to him. He's bold. But I'm just pointing out that I smell (not total) dishonesty from him. Of course beginners make mistakes, but I've seen hundreds of beginners and the mistakes he makes smell fishy.

What mistakes were fishy?

I still don't understand why people think there is something fishy about this (There IS a PR angle of course, but that's not fishy exactly). He memorized a pre-written thing and made some pronunciation mistakes. I've listened to Japanese people make pre-written speeches in English somewhere around 2,000 times (I've been an English teaching for a bit more than five years), and maybe two hundred times I've seen native English speakers make speeches in Japanese at various levels (since I've been to Japanese speech contests, and participated in one, and a few other opportunities). I know how people sound when they do this type of thing--and guess what? There's nothing fishy at all about how he sounds. What are you guys talking about?

Also, I think what he does here is quite hard to do in two weeks. You'd have to work your butt off, as I'm sure he's doing. Though there's no reason the average person couldn't do it.

yeah he was was reading from a script and you can even tell in the video. However, the Japanese native speaker didn't seem to have a script as you can tell from when benny completely misunderstands and other times when he needs him to write things down. Just asking him to write things down came off more fluent than I was speaking at one week.

I don't know for a fact but I'd bet the script is written in hiragana. Another plus at one week.

Completely agree with everything Tzadeck says.

I think the best thing to learn from Benny is he doesn't make superhuman progress, he makes the same amount of progress as all of us would if we put in the same amount of time or effort. Of course we don't have the free time he does, but it does mean that if we really really wanted to - we could get to a basic conversation level in Mandarin in only a few months, or get really good at something like Esperanto or German in the same time frame.

Lots of people don't actually know how long it takes to learn a language, at least Benny is putting himself out there showing how quickly someone studying constantly can do it. I think its somewhat useful and perhaps inspiring to some.

I think in the very beginning I was hoping for a little more from Benny, in the sense I was perhaps mistakenly expecting the above "superhuman" progress - because hes a supposed polygot who really knows how to attack learning a new language. So I was expecting his videos to be a little better even at this super early stage, especially scripted ones.

But its not, he isn't, and that's perfectly okay. I still don't understand all of the hate for him though, it strikes me as jealousy more than anything else to be honest. Not jealous of his Japanese but of his blog supported language learning lifestyle, that I'm sure many of us would want to do if we were able to.

Hate? Criticism isn't hate. If this is "hate" then you'd think publishers and HR responsible for handling resumes were hate-mongering tyrants.

Even if those criticizing were indeed jealous, it doesn't alter the content of their arguments.

As a side note: I don't think it is entirely fair to use the same set of judgment variable for a self-proclaimed polyglot which relies on their popularity to remain in their position, and that or a "normal person". A "normal person", for example, generally doesn't have the experience of years of language acquisition in multiple languages. It's like comparing a professional athlete training for a sport outside their experience with a normal person training for the same sport. If you expect the experienced athlete and the average person to skill themselves in the said other sport/skill set, you're fooling yourself.

For the run of the mill person not experienced in learning multi-languages over a short period of time, then I would say that the progress Benny has shown is, well, it's not much but I think it would be a little over the top to expect any more. For an experienced polyglot with the emblazoned modus operandi: speak from day one, well... I'm looking forward to his final video.


Benny is a big boy: he can censor and ignore any criticisms without people trying to characterize those whom express them.

uisukii Wrote:it doesn't alter the content of their arguments.

What are the arguments again? That's what I don't get. Vague dislike is not content.

Simply that for someone that's runs a seemingly popular blog offering language hacking tips from a self proclaimed polyglot (and who's advice runs contrary to many successful language learners) his results appear to be underwhelming. That's all people are saying.

For someone who ought to have a reasonable ear for languages, his accent does seem a little crappy but I'll leave my ultimate judgement until I see his
results after 3 months.

nadiatims Wrote:Simply that for someone that's runs a seemingly popular blog offering language hacking tips from a self proclaimed polyglot (and who's advice runs contrary to many successful language learners) his results appear to be underwhelming. That's all people are saying.

Ah, I guess I kind of understand this, though I can't really confirm how much I agree or disagree with it since I haven't looked at his blog beyond his Japanese videos.

I mean more that I don't understand the 'fishy'ness and other various criticisms of the new video. Seems to me like it's hard to tell whether his final progress will be particularly impressive or not. It also seems like a lot of people don't understand that reciting a script this complicated two weeks in is actually really difficult.

Hello guys! I'm new to this forum and a newbie in Japanese learning, so I can't contribute much to evaluate Benny's progress, but this discussion drove me to his website, where I found two articles that drew my attention:

http://www.fluentin3months.com/become-br...-3-months/
http://www.fluentin3months.com/sound-like-a-carioca/

In the first article he says: "That’s the mission! By mid-December, I want several Brazilians to have believed that not only am I speaking Portuguese as good as a native, but that I actually am a native."

Well, I am Brazilian and judging from his videos in Brazil I can say there's absolutely no way this guy actually passed off as a native Portuguese speaker.

He does says somewhere on the article that his goal was merely not letting people know he was a foreigner for a couple of minutes during a casual conversation, but looking at this videos in Portuguese I seriously doubt he achieved that. Specially in Rio because cariocas have a very characteristic accent, that even other Brazilians sound fake when trying to imitate.

His best sample of Portuguese speaking is on this video here, that was obviously rehearsed and scripted: http://youtu.be/FY1b513hIto?t=1m19s.

I know this doesn't have nothing to do with the things that have been discussed on this topic and I know his Japanese project seems to be very different from his Brazilian Portuguese project, but I thought this was worth mentioning.

I'm not saying the guy is a downright liar or anything like that (actually I didn't even know his work before, so I have no background to form an opinion) and it's also possible that the people he talked to him lied saying his Portuguese was perfect just to please him (believe it or not, things like that may happen around here).

He seems to be able to communicate in my mother language well enough, but he's definitely got accent, which is not a bad thing at all, in my opinion, but his claim of being able to pass off as a real carioca sounded a little fishy for me.

Mehtare Wrote:I'm not saying the guy is a downright liar or anything like that

I must say I admire Benny Lewis (no irony). To be able to make money by selling his linguistic clumsiness is quite a feat. Never heard of anything like that. Anyway, good luck.

I've been lurking here for some time but I've got to reply now that someone talked about Portuguese. I'm also Brazillian and I have to agree that Benny definitely doesn't sound anything like a carioca would sound.

I teach Portuguese for foreigners here and I think that he actually sounds like my students from French speaking countries in terms of accent. I personally think it's a really cute accent and he does seem to be able to hold some basic conversation in Portuguese but yes, judging by the videos he posted on his youtube account, he does not sound like a carioca at all. Also, you can definitely tell he's a foreigner speaking Portuguese.

Mehtare Wrote:I'm not saying the guy is a downright liar or anything like that

He actually is. This is 70% PR stunt focused on getting his brand out there. He's not even learning efficiently.

Not even worth a thread.

ryuudou Wrote:Not even worth a thread.

May the people who whinge, criticise, or otherwise express their dislikes for Benny’s videos think about that. Imagine that there was no Benny with his youtube posts showing his progress with his chosen method of language study. Would you really think this would be a better situation? Maybe I’m projecting now but I would think that in general you would prefer to be better informed rather than less informed (regardless of your opinion on the actual matters - well, just having the opinion seems to be a good thing).

So what’s the point of all this criticisms?

^People are voicing their opinions, which from a relativism standpoint, is dependent upon the individual's beliefs and background. Many online arguments neglect that different people see the world differently.

Im probably overgeneralizing a bit, so take my response with a grain of salt.

I don't know if people here are haters, but it is possible that people are offended. Who knows.

Aspiring Wrote:I don't know if people here are haters, but it is possible that people are offended. I'll be honest, I was a bit offended by his videos.

Offended???

Offended by what exactly?

That's a very strange thing to say.

Very strange. I'm a strange person.

[s0apgun]

He's offended for the very same reasons Zgarbas pointed out in the beginning of this thread where Benny discredited the JLPT. A lot of people work very hard at studying Japanese and for our efforts to be mocked by his marketing angles is somewhat offending.

Those who feel offended by Benny’s stunt and PR should really grow a bit thicker skin... or stop taking themselves (or Benny for that matter) so seriously.

s0apgun Wrote:He's offended for the very same reasons Zgarbas pointed out in the beginning of this thread where Benny discredited the JLPT. A lot of people work very hard at studying Japanese and for our efforts to be mocked by his marketing angles is somewhat offending.

now I know where you're coming from here, but, as someone who is studying hard to take the jlpt n1 this december... I dont think we (at least I don't) work hard because it's a great test worth our efforts. we take it because it is the test. the only credible test.

if there were a credible alternative out there I think a lot of people would take that instead. but this is it, so this is what we do.

of course it feels lousy to have someone tell you that this thing you're working hard on is worthless, no matter if it's good or not. it's not worthless... but it's not good either. at least in my opinion.

his criticism of the lack of a production component is entirely valid in my view. you could just sit in a room for 4 years studying by yourself and pass the jlpt without being able to place an order at a restaurant.
the grammar section is full of archaisms that one never comes across in actual written japanese.
all the questions basically come down to the splitting of semantic hairs between 2 similar terms.
and I could go on...

but that being said... if you want to get a job in japan, or to prove you have professional language ability on a resume, you must pass the jlpt. so we struggle forward on the long march toward this silly test.