Forget about The Mimic Method approach and all the other language philosophies out there for a moment and take some time to consider this simple fact: You learn skills ONLY after many hours of practice.
People are always amazed at how polyglots like Moses McCormick and I are able to achieve fluency in a foreign language in a matter of months when they themselves have spent years studying the language and still struggle to hold a basic conversation.
The flaw in their thinking lies in their perception of “time”. You may have taken a language class for 2 years, but in a 1 hour class you’ll be lucky to get your lips moving for more than 10 total minutes; the rest of the time is typically spent listening to the teacher, other students, or writing some stupid stuff.
So even if you got to class three times a week, you’re only getting 30 minutes tops of speaking practice per week, not to mention that the quality of that practice is low since it’s an artificial classroom context instead of a real world one.
Calendar time is irrelevant for polyglots like Moses and me – we focus on output.
Moses makes a point to get at least an hour of raw conversation output on his single level up missions. It takes me a good 30-40 total hours of intense flow-training in a language before I develop a strong enough command of the accent and flow to start learning through mimicry.
Moreover, I only start learning to communicate through mimicry once I get to the target country/locale, where I end up spending the majority of my waking hours speaking the target language. So in the same week the average classroom student accumulates 1 hour of artificial output, I’m putting in between 50 and 70 hours.
Do the math and you’re realize that there’s absolutely nothing amazing about what Moses and I have accomplished. As Moses puts it simply in the video:
“The more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it. That’s just how it is.”
Our Self-Recording for YOU!
The only way to keep yourself honest about what you accomplish in anything is by keeping track of it. Since language is about sound, it only makes sense that audio-recording yourself is the most powerful motivational tool.
There are two main advantages to self-recording for language-learning:
- Being able to hear your errors
- Keeping track of your progress
The focus of The Mimic Method of course is on pronunciation and flow, and I recommend the following self-recording techniques for honing your language flow:
- Break down song lyrics and teach them to yourself (Click here to learn how I do this)
- Use the “flow-verlap” and give yourself feedback on your own pronunciation
- Sign up for my Flow Series Program and have me personally train you through the Cloud. (Click here to learn more about the Flow Series)
With Foreign Language Roadrunning, Moses focuses on getting out there and seeking the nearest native speakers to practice speaking with in order to “level up”. For measuring your progress in speaking ability, just seek out “level up” opportunities as often as you can and use the Soundcloud app (both Android App and iOS apps available for free) to record and store these conversations on the cloud.
Because Soundcloud stores your tracks chronologically, it’s extremely easy to go back in time and see how much worse you are compared to now. There’s nothing more motivating than a measurable sense of progress.
The Self-Recording Challenge
I can write about this all day, but you wont’ really appreciate the power of self-recording for language-learning until you start doing it yourself.
Click here to access the flow forum and make your declaration for your “self-recording goal”. Start with something modest like “I plan on self-recording myself reading out loud for ten minutes a day” or “I plan on self-recording myself practicing Spanish with my co-worker for 1 hour total a week”
Once you build your rhythm, you can start upping the ante and accelerating your language learning process even more.
The most important thing is that you start.
Leave a Reply