Tweet

Languages: Why 5 Weeks?

Prefer to read?

Hola, bonjour. Konnichiwa on yourself Bongiorno. Hello. I hope you are all well today. I want to talk about a question I get a lot.

The name of this show obviously is the Five-week Linguist. I have a book by the same name and there’s a reason for it. So I wanted to explain where the five weeks came from.

When I was a young language teacher, I had about nine weeks of not working during the summer and that time was absolutely precious to me.

When I was a young Spanish teacher, I was at a similar proficiency level to where a lot of non-native speaking college graduates were. That sort of intermediate high/ Advanced low. B2 kind of approaching C1.

At the end of the day, I knew that I needed to learn more Spanish, especially if I was teaching upper levels. I also had the experience of teaching at a university (English) and so they were completely different experiences with English being my native language.

It was a lot easier for me to be able to answer any question I needed to, and I wanted to be able to do the same in Spanish. I knew that it would be better for me. It’ll be better for my students. So I always had five weeks that I could find during the summer to work on my language skills, whatever to work on them fairly intensely.

And some of the things that I did early on was study in Spain very intensively and intensely during that time. I took classes there, did some private tutoring, and even did a master’s degree some of which are classes met during the summer in Spain for five weeks. I’ve been to private language schools during five week periods.Basically, it came out of being able to fit it into my schedule. And as the years went on I discovered that.

Time had a huge impact on language proficiency. So I would try to get in as much time as possible. And I used to do something called the 200-hour Challenge and I would make huge progress by investing 200 hours in language study. And this also looked many different ways. As I said I spent time working on a master’s degree.

In Spain I spent time studying Spanish at private language schools, and spent time traveling. I’ve also spent five-week periods where I didn’t leave my house very much and I read and did courses.

The 200 hours comes from research. So basically Spanish being a category one language, t’s fairly close to English and you can make marked progress by investing about 200 hours in activities that allow you to understand new language and produce new language. So when you’re an absolute beginner, in that 200 hours you can make huge progress.

You’re going to make less progress in that 200 hours. And then when you get to doing that sea level that advanced that advanced into Superior on the actual scale. The progress is a whole lot slower. And that’s where I was the first time I did the Five Linguist and the 200-hour challenge etcetera. I knew that 200 hours was based on research.

To give me marked progress, I would get results. And as I said, it was really important to me the level I was at going through that advanced level. It takes at least three times as long to make the same amount of progress as it does when you’re beginning in a language and then if you think about languages that are more difficult like a category two or three)I&...