bflatnine Wrote:My conversational ability after three months was better than his, no doubt about it. My pronunciation and tones were miles beyond his, which makes it MUCH easier for people to understand what I'm saying. After a month of class, I remember going out with my classmates and spending the entire night speaking in Chinese about things like drug use in the US vs Japan. Sure, we had to use a lot of circumlocution ("crack" is like a white drug rock that you put in a thing, light it on fire, and breathe the smoke...etc.), but this is, IMO, a better indicator of language ability than talking about language learning for a few minutes. You're learning a language – of course you're going to be able to talk about language learning after three months of doing so.

Bflatnine; it's clear from your blogs that you've been studying Chinese since early 2007. You arrived in Taiwan late 2011, so that's 4.5 years of study + passive listening to Chinese music and movies.

I'm not belittling your achievements, but to compare your speaking ability with someone who just started learning from scratch 90 days ago is not really fair.

Anyway I showed that video to my finance, and she could understand everything he was saying (though she noted his grammar and expressions were weird, she could guess what he meant). If what he's done is so easy / unremarkable, then there should be plenty of full-time beginner mandarin students here in Taiwan who can speak like him after their first semester. Maybe there are, but I've never met one..

Zgarbas Wrote:I'm always fascinated by how whenever someone stands out as a language learner the language learning communities' first instinct is to criticize/underappreciate/outright insult that said person for not being a language-learning superman. Why is that? Is it because they get the spotlight? Because they make money out of it? E-Penis?

What keeps amazing me, is that there are always learners eager to discuss someone else's level and claims thereof, instead of not caring and just becoming inspired using it to focus on one's own development. But that seems to be inherent to fora, facebook, twitter, ... any large sample of comments.

In the video Benny makes quite a lot of grammatical mistakes, and often comes up with strange or unnatural sounding expressions when he's having difficulty expressing a particular point. This is natural though for second language learners.

His tones are somewhat all over the place, but I get the feeling that (especially since his method is so conversation focused) he could improve on this quite easily and naturally with time. As an aside, John's pronunciation is really good and natural sounding (I've been following his Sinosplice blog for many years now, check it out especially the older articles if you're interested in Chinese).

I think Benny definitely needs more time to polish what he has into something that you could really call passable, even with the admittedly vague standard of "conversationally" fluent. Certainly longer than three or four months, given how different a language Chinese is to English, and how much longer it takes on average to reach the same level compared to European languages. At the moment, his level in speaking in terms of vocabulary and breadth of expressions might be comparable to a decent first or second year university student.

I like his ability to inspire others to get motivated to learn languages and I applaud him for that, but I think we need to be reasonable (and realistic) about just how much time and effort it takes.

I think Benny kinds of shoots himself in the foot with his 3 month mission. His impatience leads him to using very shortsighted strategies that are just slower in the long run, and 3 months full-time should be long enough for a slightly more more longterm strategy to get better results. He's so eager to jump out and start speaking, that he needs to drill things over and over, be taught by a tutor, listen to learner podcast and things. If he just focused on building up his comprehension and letting things sink in over time he'd be able to cover a lot more ground and end up able to communicate on a broader range of topics, speak more naturally and better understand what others are saying. I'd compare his approach to crash dieting. A crash dieter might lose more weight in the first week, but it doesn't necessarily mean they've actually improved their health, and it'll be a lot more painful than just making sensible long term lifestyle changes...

Zgarbas Wrote:I'm always fascinated by how whenever someone stands out as a language learner the language learning communities' first instinct is to criticize/underappreciate/outright insult that said person for not being a language-learning superman. Why is that? Is it because they get the spotlight? Because they make money out of it? E-Penis?

(genuine curiosity)

It's because they're lying. They invariably exagerrate their abilities, and then react violently against the critics who expose them. And it doesn't help that they also tend to profiteer off their fan base.

I'm sure there are plenty of learners on here who've felt cheated after visiting language guru websites (in the case of this forum, AJATT is suspect number one). Sure, such sites are motivating and offer useful info, but they also shatter hopes and offer broken promises. While offering their unique version of repackaged know-how that almost any language veteran possesses (i.e. cheap marketing ploys), they give the impression that all you have to do to master a language is hardcore immersion for a short time. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rather than asking why language gurus are criticized and insulted, we should be asking why such individuals are tolerated, and even idolized, despite their numerous shortcomings.

it's because people don't look further than the F word in the title before they declare people liars and gurus.

The target audience of Benny's blog are likely to be people who want to go on holiday in a few months and want to be able to communicate when they get there.

The target audience of AJATT's silverspoon are long term learners who either don't have the time or energy to learn about language learning for themselves, or who can't stick to learning, but still want to.

Both offer helpful services to the types of people who need it, and both are making a bit of cash out of something they've put effort into and enjoy doing. Let's not have another guru war, eh?

cults offer helpful services to the types of people who need them, and are making a bit of cash out of something they've put effort into and enjoy doing. Let's not have another guru war, eh?

You know, sometimes criticism is actually valid.

I don't particularly care that he is selling a product. It's a free world after all. I previously gave a conservative estimate of 450 hours in total (assuming he studied 5 hours a day). According to wikipedia, typical study hours to pass JLPT 4級 are 150 hours. for what it's worth, I passed JLPT 3級 after 4 months (admittedly in Japan). I didn't study 5 hours a day. And my study methods at that time were pretty crappy. I didn't know about heisig, or immersion. I didn't have any sweet "language hacking skills."

i'm not against criticism... of course some criticism is valid! Lots of it is!!! It's when people start going on about lying gurus that i start rolling my eyes. The rest of the discussion was interesting, i thought. It's just kinda like, cmon, this is a pro blogger, not a cult. Most people nowadays are well aware that blogger's opinions are just that... blogger's opinions. Nothing more exciting than that.

(edit: and yes, they're selling you something you don't need. But that's the aim of every single piece of advertising you'll ever see in your life... to sell you something that you don't need. The only difference is that corporations are just more slick at it, and actually appear to have authority on the subject so it slides down easier. But in any case, maybe someone just wants the thing, which is also fine. At least these kind of bloggers offer you a no questions asked refund if you're not satisfied as well. Never seen a beauty product do that, for example, when it turns out you might as well have used normal 20p soap instead；）)

In Benny's case, like someone mentioned earlier, his aim is to encourage normal people that they can learn to carry a conversation in a few months. He doesn't claim to be the best thing ever, as far as i read. He openly admits his speech is far from perfect, and that the aim is to communicate at a normal speechrate rather than accuracy. All the same, i think it would have been more interesting if he had subbed the english with the mistakes left in.

Right, JLPT3 is pretty easy to achieve. But that doesn't mean, for a lot of people, that they could speak at a JLPT3 level either, even if they pass it. JLPT level doesn't really have anything to do with how well you can communicate in Japanese...

There are also 2 major differences between you and the type of people who are into pro blogs. 1. you find it easy to be self reliant. 2. you probably do have talent at picking up languages and using them easily.

After 3 months learning japanese, writing a short lang-8 entry was pretty long winded and torturous, and there would have been absolutely 0% chance of carrying a spoken conversation. That's the effect of long term methods aimed at understanding, which is fine, but that isn't for everyone...

aphasiac Wrote:

bflatnine Wrote:My conversational ability after three months was better than his, no doubt about it. My pronunciation and tones were miles beyond his, which makes it MUCH easier for people to understand what I'm saying. After a month of class, I remember going out with my classmates and spending the entire night speaking in Chinese about things like drug use in the US vs Japan. Sure, we had to use a lot of circumlocution ("crack" is like a white drug rock that you put in a thing, light it on fire, and breathe the smoke...etc.), but this is, IMO, a better indicator of language ability than talking about language learning for a few minutes. You're learning a language – of course you're going to be able to talk about language learning after three months of doing so.

Bflatnine; it's clear from your blogs that you've been studying Chinese since early 2007. You arrived in Taiwan late 2011, so that's 4.5 years of study + passive listening to Chinese music and movies.

The reason people quickly become critical when they hear claims of incredible linguistic achievements in unbelievable time is that there's almost always some kind of attenuating circumstances or undisclosed conditions. I know nothing about bflatline's situation, but reading his post, I was lead to believe that he was discussing drug use after a month of studying Chinese. I was going to question it, but lo and behold, aphasiac comes and says that that was after 4.5 years plus of study. That's a huge difference! It seems bflatline considers that studying at home doesn't count and you only start counting from the moment you use it or move the country. Benny is claiming he only started studying when he got there. How does that even remotely compare?

It's so common for people to make claims without being able to appropriately evaluate what they are stating. People are usually right to question incredible claims.

Quote:Bflatnine; it's clear from your blogs that you've been studying Chinese since early 2007. You arrived in Taiwan late 2011, so that's 4.5 years of study + passive listening to Chinese music and movies.

I'm not belittling your achievements, but to compare your speaking ability with someone who just started learning from scratch 90 days ago is not really fair.

Well, to be honest it was more like 4.5 years of floundering around, a lot of learning about the language and not much actually learning the language, etc. My conversation level when I came here was not as high as Benny's is now. I knew a lot of individual characters, but not many words. When I "read" in Chinese, it was more like trying to decipher than anything else, and believe me when I say "somewhat passable advanced beginner".

I'll grant you that all of this screwing around helped me to connect the dots more quickly than the average learner here, but I'll also say that the length of time spent learning a language means absolutely nothing. What counts is what your actual ability in the language is, and mine when I got here was absolute crap.

My point in comparing myself to Benny is not to brag on myself, because I still have a LONG way to go, but to demonstrate that a smarter approach would have served him well. Plus, I think anyone that puts himself out there on the internet, makes a lot of big claims, and insults a lot of people (check out the thread about him on Chinese-forums and you'll see what I mean), twists around the words of anyone who disagrees, etc. deserves to be put under a microscope, criticized, and exposed when they make these sorts of absurd claims.

bflatnine Wrote:I'll grant you that all of this screwing around helped me to connect the dots more quickly than the average learner here, but I'll also say that the length of time spent learning a language means absolutely nothing. What counts is what your actual ability in the language is, and mine when I got here was absolute crap.

I wouldn't downplay the effect of time on the brain's ability to subsequently pick up new information from the language. The amount of time spent familiarizing yourself with its sounds, for instance, has a huge effect and makes acquisition of new vocabulary a lot easier. Over time, you also build a significant passive knowledge of the language that can be activated a lot faster than it could ever be acquired from stratch.

I was just joking about the cult thing.

The crux of the matter is Benny's advice is generally bad and it is reflected in his results. Another thing is that he has a reputation for deleting any comments on his blog or youtube that are even slightly critical (objective or not). So all that remains are all the "wow! Amazing job." style comments, mostly from other beginners.

my problem with these "gurus" is that most of us know that there are no shortcuts to language learning and also, a lot of us are convinced that it's not really a talent but a skill to be developed over time. so when people come up with these ways to speed up the process, well, yeah, we're gonna get defensive.

my biggest problem with AJATT is that not adhering to AJATT is considered adhering to AJATT. hey man! you can't have it both ways! lol

but yeah i'm pretty much over it, i'm at the level where language is more of a personal goal so i don't really feel the need to share it or tell people about it or whatever. i just come here for fun or if i have questions. so when billy bob takahashi-san comes with a new revolutionary strategy, meh, mine works fine.

IceCream Wrote:But that doesn't mean, for a lot of people, that they could speak at a JLPT3 level either, even if they pass it. JLPT level doesn't really have anything to do with how well you can communicate in Japanese...

everyone can speak at a JLPT3 level because JLPT3 doesn't test speaking. =)

(just like how everyone can do math at a shakespearean english level.)

for that matter, it's kinda ridiculous that we keep measuring skill in terms of absolute time (the time that we spend living on earth) instead of in terms of studying hours.

nadiatims Wrote:I was just joking about the cult thing.

The crux of the matter is Benny's advice is generally bad and it is reflected in his results. Another thing is that he has a reputation for deleting any comments on his blog or youtube that are even slightly critical (objective or not). So all that remains are all the "wow! Amazing job." style comments, mostly from other beginners.

yeah, that sucks. imo, it'd be better to have an open discussion and let people decide for themselves if it's something they want to try. Then again, i never saw anyone trying to sell anything who would put criticisms of their product up for everyone to see. Can you imagine, hahah?

btw, what would your suggestions be for someone who, say, wanted to go on holiday in 3 months time and be able to communicate with people when you got there?

i'm just asking because i think, with such a short time frame, it's actually difficult to recommend anything significantly different from what Benny appears to. From his website, and some guesses, i'm imagining it's something along the lines of:
* Learn a bunch of connecting phrases to make your speech smoother.
* Learn useful phrases that you use / are used all the time.
* Get a course and learn how to talk about anything that interests you and ask questions about other people, and learn common responses. (but don't feel the need to go through it in order)
* use podcasts and stuff for more interesting subjects.
* get on skype and use what you've just learned. (with a big push on this point)
* make up and use new sentences from grammar you learned.
* self help on not being a perfectionist and not caring about mistakes you make.

In the videos he has posted, I haven't heard anything that wouldn't be found in a beginner textbook. He's just learned basic word order and a few connecting words and then overuses them. Apparently this took him 3 months full time. Maybe he knows a lot more but his videos don't demonstrate it.

For someone who intended to study full time for 3 months before a trip, I'd just recommend people focus on their listening comprehension and learning as much vocabulary as they can from materials they can enjoy. That could be youtube videos, anime, drama, phrasebooks or whatever. In commute time I'd say listen to chinesepod or something.

hmm, i still think that's not going to help most people speak after 3 months. After 3 months learning japanese full time, precisely using that method, my ability to speak had hardly budged at all.

Obviously, i'm a bit rubbish when it comes to speaking anyway (even in English it's my worst skill), but i do think it'd be pushing it a bit for most people to use a purely listening / reading method and be able to hold a conversation after 3 months.

Learn? No.

Speak with fluency using a limited vocabulary? Yeah, sure. But speaking is the easy part.

The oldest trick in the book is simply to monopolize the conversation and turn it toward what you're able to talk about. (People use this dodge in interviews and essay exams as well, when they don't have a ready answer to a question.) The real proof of ability is in giving concise, reasonable answers to questions on a range of topics. Simple as that.

This discussion and his chinese videos have piqued my interest so much, that I decided to watch Benny's Ted talk. Interesting watch, plus he addresses the main criticisms in this thread:

- His whole method is based around talking from day 1 using broken grammar, and only once you feel comfortable with the language then you hit the grammar books and correct your mistakes.
His rationale seems to be that grammar study only makes sense retrospectively and is meaningless/boring for a beginner, and also that some grammar errors will correct themselves naturally once you're having conversations and hear the correct version in use.
I think the quote he gives is (paraphrased) "I aim to make 100 grammar mistakes a day, because that proves I'm speaking a decent amount (at least 100 sentences)".

- Also another important point of his method; he doesn't care if what he says is broken or badly pronounced in the long term, as long as the listener can understand. His rationale is that language learners often don't speak for fear of making mistakes / not being good enough, where as language is for communication and it doesn't really matter.

To be fair, this might be the reason why he deletes online comments. Alot of them must be things like "you suck, you make tons of mistakes and you pronounce badly" which aren't that helpful.

making mistakes isn't the only way to learn though. Certainly you shouldn't be afraid of making mistakes; they are indeed inevitable, and you should take those as lessons. But In general learning from failure is over-rated. It's much faster to learn by copying those who are already successfully able to do something.

When Benny goes out on day one, and makes a hundred mistakes is he even really learning from them? People will very quickly give up and become tolerant of his mistakes as well as simplifying their own speech massively (communication would be impossible otherwise).

aphasiac Wrote:To be fair, this might be the reason why he deletes online comments. Alot of them must be things like "you suck, you make tons of mistakes and you pronounce badly" which aren't that helpful.

He deletes comments because he doesn't want people pointing out that his results are unremarkable and his methods bad. This would be bad for his persona and bank account.

nadiatims Wrote:When Benny goes out on day one, and makes a hundred mistakes is he even really learning from them?

His whole philosophy is based around using the language rather than studying it. Going out speaking 100 sentences will help him speak fluently quickly; the fact that he is making grammar mistakes is irrelevant (to him).

nadiatims Wrote:People will very quickly give up and become tolerant of his mistakes as well as simplifying their own speech massively (communication would be impossible otherwise).

His point is that is doesn't matter, as long as you can communicate on some basic level.

Watch his Ted talk, it's fairly short and interesting.

nadiatims Wrote:He deletes comments because he doesn't want people pointing out that his results are unremarkable and his methods bad. This would be bad for his persona and bank account.

It could be true that he deleting comments from unhappy customers, or people pointing out constructively why his method sucks. That would be pretty shady.

On the other hand, non-constructive criticisms ("your pronunciation sucks" etc, much like those that have been posted in this thread), don't help as they reinforce the negative view that you shouldn't speak until you can do so perfectly without making mistakes (which of course is impossible). I would support him in deleting those.

The reason I feel perfectly justified in pointing out that his pronunciation is awful is that we over at Chinese-forums, when he asked for our advice, told him he needed to make sure to work hard on pronunciation and tones at the beginning. He essentially said "thanks, but no thanks" and then went on this rant about how we were all perfectionists, academics, and linguists who were "crawling on our ass[es] backwards" learning Chinese, and that he was going to show us a better way. So three months later, when he has of course failed in every (absurd) goal he set for himself originally, I think it's appropriate to point out that his pronunciation is crap and he would have been better off listening to our advice.

Had he not been such an ass from the beginning, I would be more supportive of his efforts, less critical of his errors, and more willing to encourage him in his future studies. I still have no doubt that he can be successful in learning Chinese if he continues with it, but he's acted like a complete ass and I feel that warrants being called out. And if calling him out keeps someone else from being duped by this guy, then all the better.

ok, so i read the post on the chinese forums. Yeah, he says some pretty rude things.

However, most of that post is full of people being overly rude or dismissive towards him, and he didn't start off in any way aggressively, and kept his patience for a good while.

The "crawling on their ass backwards" comment was refferring to those people who end up learning for years on end and still not be able to feel comfortable holding a conversation. Like me, for example. And yes, it does feel like i've been crawling on my ass backward if speech is my primary goal in learning Japanese. Like, seriously, if that's your primary goal, you should not use a heavy-duty input method unless you're willing for it to take YEARS for you to speak comfortably, and even then you'll need output practise.

It's not acceptable, really, for most people, i agree with him. His aim is to speak and feel comfortable in conversation as quickly as possible, and that is the whole point of language learning for tons of people. His aim is also to inspire others to do the same.

The only points i really think he's waaaay too arrogant on is that
a.) he seems to think that speaking is the only thing that's really worth doing in learning a language, and everything else is written off as academic. (i'd hardly class watching a movie or a variety show as "academic", and i think it'd be well within most people's definition of competance in a language).
and b.) that he thinks it's his method of learning that leads to strong results and that everyone elses method a waste of time, whereas really all that's happened is that him and everyone else ended up learning a different subset of skills from each other. Someone who spends 3 months only on writing in a 2nd language is likely to come out better at writing than someone who spent 3 months focusing on listening to the language instead, but obviously isn't going to compete at listening...

EDIT: also, it seems his target audience isn't those who are going on holiday in a few months, but expats who are moving to a foreign country. It's trying to encourage them to build the conversational skills needed to live in the country and make friends and generally be social in the first few months, before they end up living in an English bubble. Since communicating is going to be hugely helpful in avoiding ending up like that, it's arguably more important than a well balanced learning method if you're in that group, imo.

Input is more important than output. Almost everyone listens and reads more than they speak and write. Sure, Benny is able to talk nonstop after being asked simple questions about himself, but would he be able to understand a conversation about the thoughts and feelings of someone else? In terms of surviving in a foreign country, being able to listen and read with comprehension takes priority over speech.

I'd also like to comment on those praising the smoothness of Benny's speech. Most of you probably have a much larger vocabulary and grammar knowledge than him. If you just focused on speaking without interruptions, instead of trying to focus on producing grammatically correct sentences and phrases, I'm sure most of you could easily replicate his results. Benny speaks so effortlessly not so much because of his learning and practice, but because of his character. If you want to speak with the kind of comfort and abandon that Benny embodies, lowering your inhibitions will help more than any amount of studying.

vileru Wrote:I'd also like to comment on those praising the smoothness of Benny's speech. Most of you probably have a much larger vocabulary and grammar knowledge than him. If you just focused on speaking without interruptions, instead of trying to focus on producing grammatically correct sentences and phrases, I'm sure most of you could easily replicate his results. Benny speaks so effortlessly not so much because of his learning and practice, but because of his character. If you want to speak with the kind of comfort and abandon that Benny embodies, lowering your inhibitions will help more than any amount of studying.

That's pretty much what Benny says...