Regardless of his ability or how far he gets I think it is very unprofessional of him to come to a forum for people learning the language, many of whom have a better understanding of what learning the language entails, and then slag off the number one internationally recognized qualification for measuring ability in that language. Within days of starting. Even if that criticism is warranted.

@raharney
as i said immigrant covers a pretty high range. The reason I specified non-english is to exclude all the english teachers who *mostly* speak only tourist level japanese despite technically being immigrants. I'm really speaking about all the people working in japan doing normal jobs (eg. myself) or studying in universities/schools etc in Japan (with the language of instruction being japanese). It's somewhat insulting (and clueless) to equate our level with that of tourists. I know some non-english immigrants perhaps have sucky japanese but most don't as their legal immigrant status depends on them being employed or enrolled in a school/uni (which typically requiring at least passable japanese).

@stian
maybe, but is he claiming to have learned them both in 3 months?

lardycake Wrote:I think it is very unprofessional of him to come to a forum for people learning the language, many of whom have a better understanding of what learning the language entails, and then slag off the number one internationally recognized qualification for measuring ability in that language.

What do you mean by 'unprofessional'? Who exactly is he working for? What institution does he represent?

I think you are demonstrating a lot of what Pierre Bourdieu was always trying to explain.

nadiatims Wrote:It's somewhat insulting (and clueless) to equate our level with that of tourists.

No it's not. The ability to talk to random strangers about random topics is how I define what you mean by 'tourism level' (since we are both assuming Benny is 'fluent' in these languages which makes the issue then one of which topics one can talk about). This is the level immigrants need as well.
The other levels you are talking about (ability to talk to customers, read operating manuals) are merely language for special (capitalism-related) activities. You are victim of the common ideological assumption that only work-related activities are authentic human activities and other activities, such as being a tourist talking to random strangers, are trivial and worthless.
Need to revalue your values comrade.

Any intermediate level learner of any language can talk to random strangers about random topics. It's not fluency.

The ability to talk to random strangers isn't special or even language related. Anyone with the right personality or in the right situation can talk to a random stranger (ever gone shopping?). It's all about the range of topics that one can handle. And let's be honest here, tourist level doesn't cover any random topic, it covers some basic introduction, shopping, directions and perhaps explaining your purpose of stay and perhaps travel plans. This is not "the level immigrants need as well" for anyone other than a language teacher or sweatshop/plantation worker.

I'm not trivialising "authentic human activities". Rather you seem to be trivialising things such as understanding what your boss/client/coworker is saying, being able to read signs, understand entertainment (tv, movies, music etc), have deep communication and express your opinion without rehearsal/dictionaries/sympathetic listeners/excessive gesturing.

How anyone can claim to be fluent while understanding less than 50% of the language around them boggles my mind. And I don't even mean being able to understand the topic necessarily but just follow the actual language. Not philosophy, not politics, not theology or medieval literature, just basic contemporary spoken language.

nadiatims Wrote:@stian
maybe, but is he claiming to have learned them both in 3 months?

Nope, but it proves that an English speaker is able to achieve fluency in at least two foreign languages. Also, his "fluent in three months" is more of a personal challenge rather than a promise.

raharney Wrote:I am not as familiar with Benny's website and history as you are but from the little I have read I think you have him all wrong.

Totally agree. You are not very familiar with Benny.

raharney Wrote:His attitude is not at all any assumption of superiority.

Actually, it is. You would be amazed how many fair, well thought out posts by highly accomplished polyglots and others that are critical of him in any way have been deleted on his blog, you-tube channel, etc. He is perhaps the rudest of all you-tube polyglots, and that includes Clugston. Insulting people is one of his ways of "generating buzz" imo. Unless he has changed, you are likely to see it here too.

raharney Wrote:his constant message is that any eejit can learn a language with the right enthusiasm and methods.

I agree that this is one of his messages. Another is "buy my language learning products".

raharney Wrote:Benny is fighting the fight for the silenced English speakers of the world.

What does that even mean?

raharney Wrote:What do you mean by 'unprofessional'? Who exactly is he working for? What institution does he represent?

He is doing this for his own profit. Isn't that enough?

Stian Wrote:his "fluent in three months" is more of a personal challenge rather than a promise.

Great. I'm going to create a blog called "New cars for $100". I won't actually sell any new cars for $100, it will just be a personal challenge to myself to try to buy one for that price.

Watching your related video discussing the project provided a little more insight into the happenings of it (sorry for not knowing who you were before, fluentin3months Benny Lewis). It has it's charm. The overall has it's charm. A welcoming naive mediocrity about language acquisition. To be able to connect with people and feel good about it as long as you never have to overstay the honeymoon period wherein the facade of smiles falls away and real, adult communication is required.

There is so much you will probably never really comprehend about how the Japanese tend to operate, without studying the written aspect.

While it is all nice to say you don't want to read a paper - and this might sound rude, but I don't mean offense- but to explore a language while ignoring it's literature is like trying to appreciate a sunset beach from a postcard.

It is how we have recorded our existence, as societies and individuals. To honestly give a damn about a culture and it's people, you'd also want to explore the written thoughts, stories, poetry, of her denizens.


But hey, #yolo, and all that swagger.

Well this thread has quickly become a perfect example of why I don't follow this crap.

@Wulfar I thought I recognized your handle from previous trolling online...

Please keep trolling at a minimum. This has been such a friendly community until you charged in and made stuff up. I only delete comments on my blog/Youtube when they are genuinely hateful. This is a standard on blogs and channels.

I'm not insulting people here, but you are. Cut it out, and keep the banter friendly.

People can presume that most things Wulfar says are motivated by spending too much time in echo chambers with others who have a thing for putting down motivated people. It's crab mentality at its best: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality

To others who are saying that I'm only aiming for tourist level, as has been pointed out already, I've worked as a professional engineer AND professional translator in several languages, and sat C2 exams, several times. This would be like an N1 exam except with much more to it because you have to write an essay and defend your level spontaneously in front of a native speaker. This is as WELL as demonstrating good grammar and understanding of text.

Some CEFRL exams are so complex that it can take months for you to receive your results. Yes, it's not as scalable as the JLPT, but then you are truly testing an individual. I'm sorry but I don't feel multiple choice tests are that useful beyond beginner level in language tests. But of course generic questions can indeed test grammar and understanding of texts very well. Such a test has a very specific purpose; I just don't happen to appreciate that purpose.

I will reach a "tourist level" within a few weeks or a month. How on earth could it take more time to be able to ask simple questions about where things are and order food, and say a few things about yourself, if you are dedicating several hours a day to the project and focusing on speaking? I'll upload a video at my one month point to demonstrate doing these kinds of things. The level I'm aiming for is much higher than this.

For those of you who are adamant about this point that one is either a "tourist" or much much much later a worthy speaker, then I can only refer you to a blog post I've written with my thoughts on this: http://www.fluentin3months.com/elitist/

I also disagree strongly with this idea that you can't get to know a culture by talking to its people, but only through its literature. This is another point we'll simply have to agree to disagree on.

As some have pointed out, I'm seeing a huge bias towards the written form of the language on this forum. That is of course very good because that is your passion. Mine is speaking the language live with a person. As such, an exam that doesn't test your spoken skills is one I find irrelevant to my purposes (I'm sorry I even mentioned the JLPT now because I wasn't aware that it simply left out this aspect as somehow irrelevant, when to me it's the core of what language learning is about). From now on I won't be regarding the JLPT system as relevant to my project, since it doesn't test the very thing my entire project is about: Can I have real conversations with real people?

You can call it "unprofessional" of me to be unimpressed by the JLPT, but my reasons stand; it's a language evaluation that doesn't test your ability to speak. It serves its purpose, and we will simply have to agree to disagree on how well it does that. CEFRL tests cost much more money for many reasons, and more attention to each individual is one of those reasons. I can't imagine the Alliance Française ever dream of producing a multiple choice test as well as not speaking to the person they were awarding a certificate with.

This lack of interest in spoken abilities in tests is definitely a cultural difference, so I'll keep this in mind and not bring it up in conversations with Japanese people.

I'll make a note on my introduction video description that I don't care for the JLPT any more, and will mention it in the next blog post. Spoken B2 or higher on the CEFRL is what I'm after. If I'm successful, I will upload a video in 3-4 months demonstrating this level sufficiently and you'll know what I mean by the range of possibilities at this level. If I'm not successful and get a B1 level instead, then I'll say as much. This video of me being interviewed in Arabic is more or less a B1 level: http://www.fluentin3months.com/arabic-results/

Anyway, if the kind of messages like Wulfar's cynical "he's only after people's money" take over the thread, I'll have to leave it be, because feeding trolls is a terrible use of time better spent focused on the language. I do hope to come back and ask you guys for advice later!

For now, I'm off to record a video entirely in Japanese (today is day 3). It's quite cringe-worthy because I'll be very slowly reading Kana, but my hope is that this will show the true feeling of progress as the weeks wind on, for you to see my first attempt just 48 or so hours after learning my fourth word in Japanese. I'll upload that video on Friday after I've had time to subtitle and add graphics to it.

All cynicism, disagreements on JLPT etc. aside, I'm sharing this story with the world to try to inspire people to do something with their own languages. Disagree with my philosophy all you like, but if people are motivated to try to speak themselves, from seeing me struggle to do it for a few weeks, then that really isn't THAT bad, is it

Zgarbas Wrote:Overall 9.0. I won't cry myself to sleep if I score an 8.5, though.

Modeling everything as multiple-choice tests where 9.0 is 39-40 and 8.5 is 37-38 out of 40 (as seems to be the case for listening and academic reading, but it's not guaranteed even there), if you get 36 of the questions right with 100% probability and have a 75% chance of answering each of the remaining 4 correctly, you'll get an overall 9.0 with 94% probability. Dropping the 75% to 56% would still give you a 50% chance.

Using a flat 97.5% or 95.6% per question changes the results very little, which illustrates why the JLPT has such a low pass mark: the information content of a multiple-choice test result depends on Min(right_answers, wrong_answers), not on the number of questions.

Good luck.

wulfgar2 Wrote:Great. I'm going to create a blog called "New cars for $100". I won't actually sell any new cars for $100, it will just be a personal challenge to myself to try to buy one for that price.

I don't see how that's a valid response to my statement, but be my guest.

Irishpolyglot, if your goal is to inspire English speakers around the world to learn other languages, I don't believe your strategy is very effective. You've admitted yourself that you only learn languages up to a shallow level, at least this goes for Mandarin and Japanese. This, I believe, was uisukii's point that you failed to understand. When you only develop a shallow knowledge and understanding of a language, and you obviously cannot understand the finer nuances of the language and the linked cultures, yet call yourself "fluent"... That does not make for good role modeling to me. Especially with Japan, there's a big problem with foreigners treating it like some kind of toy-like country, where you don't need to take people seriously because they aren't quite like "us". They are weird and trying to REALLY understand them is pointless. I think that nadiatims, along with others, also wanted to convey this idea.

To you, it's just a game where you are proving something. You're not committing yourself by for instance moving and trying to establish a network of good friends (or getting a family). Taking on a language ought to be more than just speaking with people, or even doing that plus reading and writing. It's about trying to learn about different viewpoints, new ways to experience the same world you've always been living in, and to build up deeper understanding with people (even if it's built on one-way communication like when you read a book).

Through your efforts to promote yourself, your methods and the idea about language learning being for everyone, you are losing what I think is the most important of all in order to use a language beautifully. You are not humble.

P. S. The best thing I've seen when it comes to inspiring English speakers to learn another language is this piece by Eddie Izzard, that I absolutely love

P. P. S. It's disconcerting how irishpolyglot's answer to wulfgar contains almost text-book examples of typical strategies employed by cults, pyramid scheme organizations etc. to counter criticism. Especially the part about "crab mentality" which is meant to paint wulfgar as a "hater" that only wants to ruin others' success. This should make anyone's alarm bells go off. And also the part where he ranted on about his own credentials which is a foul pro hominem(heh) move that evades having to use reasoning to debate. As a side note, it's eerily similar to many things I've seen during the last two days while researching a company called "Vemma" (a product based pyramid scheme organization, I happened to overhear a conversation where a recruiter was trying to trick a person, it was almost exactly like the scene in Welcome to the NHK).

Note also that he did not mention his products even once in his reply to wulfgar despite wulfgar raising marketing of those products as one of his main concerns and even though irishpolyglot's website is filled with dubious claims and offers his "personal coaching". Even that word on its own makes me cringe, but it is of course very fitting, just like it is for AJATT - both "gurus" go really well with things like "coaching", "self-help", "unlocking your potential", "find your self-determination".

P. P. P. S. Irishpolyglot, in case you're wondering, I had never heard about you before I visited this thread. It's just that, you are not unique or special in any way at all. That's the thing with people like you, you are deliberately ignoring history to boost your own ego in the eyes of both yourself and others. You probably don't know much about AJATT, but he basically used/uses the same tricks as you are. You'll probably have better fishing luck elsewhere, because people here have seen it before and really, you're out of your league when it comes to reasoning. Though you might hope for gullible newcomers to come in and stumble upon your posts and be awed by your videos, I suppose. You might wanna check out AJATT's site and see what it, and its owner, has turned into though. Maybe it will make you have second thoughts about this shallow life you lead.

Edit: I just looked at a video with irishpolyglot in it. And saw the page offering the course and all. This is... I was surprised that people were falling for Vemma, but this is just as bad. SNAKE OIL is written all over the page and irishpolyglot's face in big, bold letters. Can't our schools do better and make us prepared to debunk things like this and think critically? Sometimes I doubt whether we as societies really ever changed much at a general level when it comes to reason and critical thought.

and as for the TL;DR for people who skip long posts like this in favor of the easily digestible messages contained within irishpolyglot's text: you gon' git scammed

lol, that's a long trolling message All the way to a PPPSs and accusations of being in a cult? Pretty impressive! I really think your time would be better spent learning the language!!

Just recorded my first video everyone. It's pretty bad, and probably impossible to watch all the way through, but will be a good comparison point as I struggle and hesitate less. Now that I've got Kana down pretty well (albeit, I read it very slowly), I'm looking forward to going through some study material, and having genuine Japanese only chats over Skype.

It's a pity the tone of the thread has gone downhill so quickly, but thanks to the first people who gave me the warm welcome. I'll try not to judge the site by this surely cynical (and downright ridiculous; pyramid schemes, really?) unfriendliness, but if it continues then unfortunately I won't be doing more than passively browsing other threads.

Out of curiosity, does this forum have any moderators, or would the thread go on indefinitely with "snake oil salesman" cries? For people with such wild claims, please watch my intro video here:

and skip forward to 02:56. The scam-artist people always always skip my actual project introductions, focusing on the title only.

Sorry if my bluntness about the JLPT offended anyone, but that was never aggression towards an individual. I really don't think these new messages are deserved, and I hope such unfriendly behaviour is frowned upon in this community.

I think "Fluent in 3 Months" is a pretty nice concept for a project, and I agree that it would probably ruffle a lot less feathers if everyone indeed saw it as a goal/target rather than some sort of business manifesto.

Good luck Benny! I'm looking forward to watching your first true video. I'm actually glad that you're participating here with us, it's sort of neat!

Watched the first 10 seconds of that video and stopped. I'm sure it's probably already been stated here, but why does he keep saying "to fluency" when it's only JLPT N2 level? If that's the definition of fluency then I may as well go apply for every job in Japan seeing as I've passed the N2 and am thereby fluent... apparently.

A few questions aside from the pedantic arguments about fluency and jltp:

What all are you actually doing to study? Just talking on skype and some textbooks? Or do you have some other things you will be doing in conjunction?

How much time are you dedicating per day, and do you have any other real responsibilities in your life? (i ask this purely to gauge how applicable this could be to other people)

And regarding languages in general, do you basically just drop a language once you finish getting it to a certain level, or do you try to maintain your current level or keep improving? I'm curious how one would maintain lots of different languages and still have time to learn new ones.

irishpolyglot Wrote:accusations of being in a cult?

irishpolyglot Wrote:downright ridiculous; pyramid schemes, really?

I was pointing out similarities in strategies utilized, not saying that you are actually doing either of these things. You are either 1) Incapable of comprehending simple arguments or 2) deliberately attempting to invalidate my arguments by feigning ignorance. In either case it doesn't make you look very trustworthy.

irishpolyglot Wrote:I really don't think these new messages are deserved, and I hope such unfriendly behaviour is frowned upon in this community.

I gave a very in-depth explanation of how you are insulting Japanese learners, Japan itself and many of the users here who criticized your methods. You are still resorting to trying to frame all critique as being mindless "hate" and adding as many labels like "ridiculous", "cynical" or any other "anti-social" tag you can think of as possible. And at the same time, you are keeping up a veneer of being "the nice guy" and appealing to mob mentality/authorities to condemn criticism. And no, moderators here usually do not hinder well-thought out criticism, thankfully. I may have made a mistake by pointing out that your material is extremely shady even at first glance, since the way I wrote it might make a moderator who isn't paying much attention think I'm trolling, but I sure hope not. I do know that is what you're hoping for, though. Good thing I don't care about my account here, I only care about the people who might end up being misled. In other words, your scare tactics won't work on me for one.

And you seem to have failed to realize that my criticism was built chiefly on your posts here, not your material on the site or your videos. If you wish to counter any arguments that have been presented against you in this thread, it should be possible for you to use reason and counterarguments. You are not doing this, instead you completely rely on rhetorical tricks to undermine critics' positions or make vague references to your own material that doesn't really contain any answers either, it's more of the same kind of attempts to make all opponents out to be stupid, extremists or people who don't want others to succeed.

You once again completely evaded discussing your products at all, instead you only mention "projects".

You also did not say anything about AJATT, possibly because you haven't bothered to find anything out about it. You share very many characteristics with the guy who runs the site (known as Khatzumoto), including dressing up your ad hominem attacks on critics in irony to make yourself seem like the guy who is laid back and being "sensical". You also share the heavily irony-laden and joking self-depreciation with Khatz. Another thing is how you build up a personal story, creating a kind of middleclass guy epic, while also saying you're an average bloke who just happened to get determined. Like I said, you are nothing new. Every move you make is incredibly transparent to anyone who's been around and has been thinking for themselves.

Edit: Also of interest is how you phrased yourself when you wrote "or would the thread go on indefinitely" in spite of the event you referred to being an isolated occurrence, meaning you used hyperbole with one single instance. It's hard to see how you could possibly have pure intentions. It is extremely, extremely early to play the "I am helpless and being bullied" card and so statements with hyperbole like this become absurd instead of effectful.

And for your information, calling people out on their foul play during debate or discussion is not the same thing as being "unfriendly". It clearly shows that you want to discredit any valid criticism. Most of us are on the side of Logos. Throughout all your posts, you are trying to persude by using Pathos and Ethos. If you're confused as to what that means, here you go http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_persuasion

I too would appreciate if you took a JLPT exam. In fact, you'd be providing us with great insight if you take the N4 exam (not N2, N4) and show us your listening results. It would be helpful for members here to see what pure output practice can do for listening comprehension, considering that purely productive learning guarantees little in terms of what you can recognise in dialogue at natural speed, although I'm sure you have a native speaking partner to help you with this throughout the next 3 months.

Wow, Surreal, you come across really badly in your posts.

Benny has said he wants to achieve a high level of verbal communicative fluency. He didn't say anything about written communication. He said he wanted to achieve N2 level-type fluency in speaking and listening. His thing has always been about using a language for the purpose of actually speaking to people using that language. Not about some dry, dusty passive knowledge in your brain. His approach will work for some types of learners, and not for others. Yeah, it might work better for languages more related to his native one. So what? So. What. No big deal.

Benny, I think it would be helpful to people on this forum who are curious, to post up what your study regime and materials are. I would be interested to see that.

Surreal Wrote:I was pointing out similarities in strategies utilized, not saying that you are actually doing either of these things. You are either 1) Incapable of comprehending simple arguments or 2) deliberately attempting to invalidate my arguments by feigning ignorance. In either case it doesn't make you look very trustworthy.

If you compare someone to something undesirable, don't be surprised if they are offended. In a similar vein if I compared someone to a Nazi, but didn't outright call them a Nazi, I would not be surprised if they became offended.

Quote:You also did not say anything about AJATT, possibly because you haven't bothered to find anything out about it. You share very many characteristics with the guy who runs the site (known as Khatzumoto),

I think he at the very least knows what AJATT is considering he wrote a guest post there in 2011.

blackbrich Wrote:In a similar vein if I compared someone to a Nazi, but didn't outright call them a Nazi, I would not be surprised if they became offended.

Hmmm, skirting Godwin's law here, I see. Well, leaving that alone.

It's fair for Benny to be -offended-. It's not fair for Benny to take the argument and twist it around like that. "Using methods similar to X and Y" ... "So you're saying I'm a Y who is a member of an X?! How dare you!" ... that's simply escalating matters while painting oneself as the injured party.

And it -is- fair to criticize Benny (as long as the criticism is fair) considering that he's not here just as another language learner ; he's here as someone who makes his living by learning languages and promoting himself, his lessons, and his methods for learning languages.

Although he's a person, he also deserves to be critically reviewed just as any other product discussed in this forum. That may sound strange and unfair, but he's the one that decided to market himself like a product instead of just working a job for a paycheck.

I am astonished at the all the shallow criticisms of Benny’s project. But then again, maybe I shouldn’t be for what is being revealed here is a certain self-referential episteme about language that works on a number of traditional but outmoded Romanticist assumptions:

(1) Culture is something that is “deep” and only understood when you “penetrate it deeply” over time.
[This is an annoyingly vacuous metaphor. Cultures are not “deep”. They are created constantly at the local level in ongoing social interactions. There is nothing more xenophobic and insular than obsessions with the “depth” of cultures.]
(2) Learning a language is about understanding the ways of thinking and inner-processes of a people.
[No its not. There are no hidden ways of thinking. People say what they say, whether they are being truthful or not. When you understand what they say you understand them. There is no telepathy in this world.]
(3) A language is about a people’s history, culture, traditions, heritage, and whatever other clichéd word you can think of.
[Nationalist claptrap at its most superficial.]

What Benny is aiming for, perhaps, is a pre-nationalist Romanticist situation where being able to speak a few languages and dialect, with no worries about professional accreditation or the condescension of the bourgeois intelligentsia caste, was simply the norm. Or perhaps he is aiming for a postmodern condition where language acquisition is wrenched out of the claws of the singularity and finitude obsessed crypto-apartheidist gatekeepers of linguistic nationalist discourses and returned to the people: i.e. us peasant, workers, and peregrinating flâneurs.
Either way he is happily challenging those who are unhealthily obsessed with the supposed invisible boundaries between “cultures”. So good on him.

Of course, I am not saying Benny has thought about it in these ways and maybe he agrees with none of what I am saying.
But either way, I like his irreverent free-spiritedness and the fact that this makes people want to attack is something I find a bit depressing to say the least.

Wow this shit went downhill fast. I dunno what you guys are even arguing about anymore...

May I just say, I have come to realize that this is not a happy place for Bennies. People who talk up their grand feats in infeasibly limited time periods get shot down over here. Just look at the reaction to Khazumoto. Probably a lot of it is justified, considering the big talkers also seem to be the best at self-deception and I don't think that's any coincidence. But really, I think the reason we're so harsh to the people who want to make themselves into an idol is that no one here really wants to believe or hear that the task of learning japanese is easy.

To put things in perspective, a studious RTKer might get volume 1 done in about 2-3 months. That's your whole period right there and that's essentially just getting through the alphabet of the language. No one gets through that and goes "WELL GEE THAT WAS EASY." But since he's not going to do it, he's going to miss out on that humbling experience. Too bad.

Then assuming the same studious individual sticks with it, they can maybe get JLPT N2 within around 2 years. So saying that you're going to get there within 3 months sounds first off like you think you're better than everyone else, and then saying that you will get there without actually taking the test just 'cuz (you don't agree with it or whatever)-- I consider that tantamount to trolling.