Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It Paperback – August 5, 2014

Added to my collection. Easy read with great info.

I am giving this book 5 stars, even though I am only halfway through the book, and I have some suggestions that I hope Mr. Wyner can use to make this approach even better!This book is unique because it is written from the perspective of the language learner (as opposed to the teacher). Other reviews detail Mr. Wyner's method, so I will describe my thoughts. I am a native English speaker, and as an adult, I started to learn Italian in my late 20s (and was told I would never be able to learn to roll my r's). I experienced the things Mr. Wyner described, such as (1) learning the incorrect Italian pronunciation, then having to re-learn the correct pronunciation (I eventually learned to roll my r's) and (2) realizing that translating from English to Italian was holding me back and making the effort to think/communicate solely in Italian. Mr. Wyner is clearly very observant and astute to have noticed what works best AND to develop this method! It is a wonderful and practical book!I have two suggestions that would make Mr. Wyner's approach even better, so here they are: Many adults that want to learn another language face time constraints and have trouble attending formal classes. Given this constraint, my first suggestion would be for Mr. Wyner to outline a handy "cheat sheet" and recommended time table of his method, for example: " (1) obtain the list of most frequently used words (which will take 1 hour to find it online), then (2) make flashcards with sounds (which will take 8 hours) and work on these 15 minutes each day, etc...". My second suggestion would be for Mr. Wyner to outline alternative resources for people who don't have time to make flashcards (or he could sell his materials as part of an overall package). For example, since listening to pronunciation is key, I found a free app named Italian Verbs (with a big V) that pronounces each verb conjugation; I have also been looking for dictionary apps with pronunciation that allow you to save a list of your favorite words. These have worked well for me so far. While reading the book, I kept thinking, "If only these materials were ready for me so I could start the learning process now!" Mr. Wyner could also sell these packages of information on his website as his own method; I know Mr. Wyner advocates that everyone make their own flash cards, but I think people can learn off of pre-made materials. For example, there is a school named Parliamo Italiano in New York City, and their founder developed her own materials that stressed conversation, pictures, and practical vocabulary words; those materials, in my opinion, were the most valuable part of that course; similarly, I think Mr. Wyner's materials would also be immensely valuable.I have been so impressed by Mr. Wyner's method, and I have been using them in my everyday life! I can't wait to finish the book, and I might update my review accordingly!

I am a Board Certified Behavior Analyst who has thought about the topic of second language acquisition extensively, and I was eager to read Wyner’s book as a manual of practical wisdom about language learning. I was delighted by how some of his ideas lined up with ones of my own, but at the same time there are many missteps that I think hinder his readers.On the positive side, Wyner acknowledges that for vocabulary we often learn to translate words from our native language into the foreign one, whereas what we SHOULD be learning is how to seamlessly comment in the foreign language on something we see or feel, without the intermediary step of thinking it out in the native. This jells nicely with ABA research showing that speech-speech connections (intraverbals) are typically weaker than requests (mands) and labeling (tacts), both in terms of retention and in terms of generalization. Wyner is also spot-on to argue against the idea that accent should not be a focus of early learning; the behavior-analytic scientific literature has long shown that errorless learning—getting it right from day one—reduces the likelihood of continued errors after the skill has been mastered. Moreover, Wyner speaks of the importance of forcing oneself to communicate exclusively in the foreign language; having spent time in Dr. Edward Taub’s lab working on ways to test his “learned nonuse” theory of stroke aphasia, I deeply appreciated this insight.But on the negative side, Wyner is firmly entrenched in cognitive neuroscience. Now, while I AM the sort of behavior analyst who is open to ideas in cognitive psychology and neuroscience IF they have practical value (disclaimer: I’m a Relational Frame Theory guy), I also think the sword cuts both ways and cog-neuro guys need to stop ignoring behaviorist ideas and research.Take, for instance, Wyner’s constant refrain that massed grammar drills are ineffective and boring and that spaced repetition is the magic bullet for retaining content. On the contrary, there is a stream of ABA research that shows that massed trials result in superior initial acquisition compared to the interspersed trials Wyner recommends (Hendrickson, Rapp, & Ashbeck, 2014; Majdalany et al., 2014)—or, at the very least, that interspersal probably does not offer any advantage for maintenance (Volkert et al., 2008). There is an equally compelling stream of research that shows that basing a system of target mastery on a single trial—as Wyner’s spaced repetition systems do—typically results in an inaccurate estimate of the student’s skills (Cummings & Carr, 2009; Najdowski et al., 2009; Lerman et al., 2011). While I feel that spaced repetition and Leitner boxes are a valuable technology for consistently scheduling maintenance of previously mastered targets—one that I plan on incorporating into my therapy case load—there just isn’t the research to back it up as a system for *acquisition.* Yes, massed trials can be boring, and no, they don’t seem to offer many advantages in terms of retention; but making 30+ flash cards per day can also be boring, and massed practice is a useful tool for certain jobs.I also find fault with Wyner’s recommendations for memorizing grammar. In short, he advises the use of violent mnemonics and fill-in-the-blank flash cards. What Wyner does not seem to realize—because again, he’s thinking like a cog-neuro guy, not a behavior analyst—is that this introduces the same complications as learning language through translation: it gums up the process with extra steps (in Relational Frame Theory, we would call them “nodes”), and it relies on learning weaker intraverbal relations instead of tacts and mands. What he ought to have done is advise making flash cards that have images that must be described with *sentences.* Yes, mnemonics and fill-in-the-blanks can be useful as PROMPTS if you consistently fail at these full-sentence requests and labels. But to rely on them 100% of the time takes a process that should go like, “See bear riding a unicycle-->comment on bear’s actions,” and belabors it with a middleman, “See bear riding a unicycle-->imagine bear exploding-->comment on bear’s actions.”Along with this come over-simplifications of behavioral science. Wyner repeatedly says, for instance, that “neurons that fire together, wire together” and that the reason why some events are more memorable than others is because they have more associations in the brain. Well, not quite. It is more accurate to say that events that uniquely signal a context in which we can obtain things we find rewarding, wire together with the behavior required to obtain said reward. Events that are contextually irrelevant tend to be forgotten. And it does not really matter how many events are present. What matters is whether the events that *are* present signal a specific reward IN THAT SITUATION. Wyner drops the ball in that he never arrives at the principal of all language-learning principles: Language is contextually functional—language is only learnt if it creates rewarding effects in our current circumstances. Everything else follows from that, and no “layers” of memory or Chomskyan Language Acquisition Device or other theoretical claptrap is necessary.So overall, I give this book four stars. Three because it is highly readable, an additional fourth because it has lots of sound and practical advice and materials, and one lost star because its failure to grasp and apply the central insights of language as *behavior* costs readers what I feel is quite a lot in terms of efficiency.

I wish I had found Fluent Forever 10 years ago—my language-learning journey would have been so much smoother and more effective! Gabriel Wyner’s approach is both practical and innovative, focusing on memory techniques and pronunciation from the start. His emphasis on using spaced repetition and building a personal connection to vocabulary makes the process engaging and efficient.As someone who speaks multiple languages, I found his insights invaluable, even for refining skills in languages I already know. This book is a must-read for anyone serious about mastering a new language. Highly recommended!

If I were learning a new language from the start, I would use the methods in this book. Lots of practical advice, but not just random thought of what worked for the author. What really works to learn a new language?An Excellent resource.