How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It

I've been struggling with Russian for about 4 years now. Started learning it during high school by writing down word lists I wanted to know, reading an old textbook I bought online. LingQ gave me some good success, Assimil too, but I was still pretty far from being anywhere notable. I read this book and used its methods for about 6 months, and with the magic of flashcards I was able to really focus on the areas in which I was lacking. Anywho, I decided to sign up for a Russian class at my university, so I got into Russian 101 with the hope that I'd be able to demonstrate enough proficiency to get into 201. They immediately put me in 301, and I'm finding it to be a cake walk.

Buy this book, it's better than any other program I've ever done. My dreams now are to use it to learn Russian, Chinese and Mexican Spanish to very advanced levels.

I speak several languages and I think his suggestions are great. I instinctively did a lot of things that he says, and I always thought I was gifted at languages, but in fact, there just may be a method. Key to it, is the learning of a lot of vocabulary, the SRS, as well as the importance of listening and pronunciation. (Many of these factors/techniques are ignored or downplayed in standard, especially university, language classes).

Overall great book, I enjoyed reading it and it gave some very useful tools for language learning. The content was slightly repetitive but the author is definitely passionate about getting you to learn which is the main aspect.

I absolutely love this book! It will teach you an outstanding process for learning any language you wish to learn.
This book is packed with excellent support resources and it is a fun read. I've learned more French in the past two weeks since I started using this book than I'd been able to learn and remember in thirty+ years of review from the college class I took in 1976.
I had hit a wall but this book opened up many new avenues and approaches. I can hardly wait to see how it works with a language I've never studied before--think I'll work to learn German next!

some great ideas although nothing terribly new. I learned about aki and it feels a bit like a sales pitch for this particular product although it does work very well and I have been pleased so far. I am not sure it is much better than another flashcard program. The thing I will walk away which is the most helpful is the idea of using images rather than just using the word in the other language.

This is an extraordinarily powerful method for building vocabulary, which is easily the most important part of learning a second language. I’ve been trying to teach myself German over the last six years with little success. (My wife was born in Germany, and we visit every other year). After 5 months of practice 2 or more hours a day with the methods described in this book, I consistently score at advanced levels (C1) on various online tests.

The author provides detailed and clear instructions, including videos, on how to use the Anki flashcard software (which is an amazing product in its own right). Using images, sound and even emotion, he shows you how to learn vocabulary so that it truly “sticks.” He also shows how to learn basic grammar without memorizing rules, and his website has a forum where you can get more information from other users. Perhaps most importantly, his methods are moderately fun.

At the same time, he does not over promise. He doesn’t claim you can attain mastery in a short time, and he encourages the additional use of other methods. (Sentence based methods have also helped me - Foreign Service recordings from the 60’s and Pimsleur).

To make the most of the book, you should also buy the intro 650 word list and the pronunciation trainer - another $20 but still cheaper than most other methods.

My only minor criticism is that, even with the Applescript he provides, making the learning cards takes me about 4-6 minutes a word instead of the 2-3 minutes he suggests. It may not sound like much, but by the time you have cards for 2000 words, that is a huge time difference (80 or so hours vs. 150 actual hours). Making the cards is more than 50% of the learning process, so this is by no means lost time, but I do wish I could make them faster.

The key question in learning a second language is which method is most efficient. Any method will improve your skills with enough time invested. I can safely say I have tried 10-12 distinct techniques (Rosetta Stone, Memrise, Duo Lingo, Babel etc.), and nothing comes close to the progress I have made with Forever Fluent.

I bought the Kindle edition, and also a number of the products from the Kickstarter campaign. https://fluent-forever.com/bundles/ They are terrific! I learned two other languages slowly using 'traditional' school methods; I learned Italian fluently in about 7 months using similar methods but nothing near as neat and organized as Gabriel's....I'm certain that my next two languages will be amazingly fast with full commitment to this process.

I'm really writing this review to also let you know that I had a problem with ordering from the online store--something with the store Payments--and Gabriel's support folks and assistant got my order sorted out in such a friendly and responsive manner that I was just delighted. Highest marks, from book, to products, to people. Thanks!

This is a well written, entertaining and practical book! The techniques he writes about can work - all you have to do is 'do it.' The flash card system is also transferrable to other topics and subjects, and his revelation of the Anki program and website was terrific. This book also confirms some other recent books written on learning, such as "A Mind for Numbers" also found on the store.

While I'm not fluent (yet) in four languages, this system is helping!

Not for experienced language teachers or learners. Useful for most others since misconceptions about language and language learning abound, even among college educated people. Wyner does a fine job of explaining how to remedy this situation.

A must have for anyone serious about beginning to learn new languages. Gabe goes into learning theory and the best available free (and some low-cost) resources on the market. All of this information is available on the interwebs but it will save you loads of time so you can just focus on learning the right way. I have already noticed a significant improvement in my memorization in just the past month that I've switched to his method.

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 highly recommend this book for anyone wishing to learn another language. Wyner outlines a self motivated method working with some remarkable tools from the internet - largely given for free - plus some other tools/books etc. It is the first method I've come across that actually makes the goal of fluency seem possible. So far using it for the last two to three months I have gone further towards learning my target language than I ever thought possible within such a short time.

Wyner points out that no-one can give you a language, you have to take it for yourself. This method facilitates doing just that. I hate to use this word but it is an 'empowering' process. Added bonus - his sense of gentle humour makes it a fun read.

This is a good find for anyone serious about language learning. After bumbling around I had probably come up with about two thirds of the same sort of process described here, and it has certainly saved me a lot of trouble in finding websites (I never was very good at searching the net). It's always nice to have help from someone who has been before you. I really am appreciating the section on using the free Anki flashcard software which I had not known about. It's probably the best free electronic flashcard program out there (at least of the ones that work with Windows), that I know of, and the instructions are helpful.

I absolutely agree with the author's basic premise that one cannot learn a language properly without knowing the sounds. Instead of paper flashcards, you can use the electronic ones and even add audio clips. This, along with the Microsoft keyboard Layout Creator, is enabling me to become paper-free and has saved me from a roomful of stacks of paper and notebooks already. (The dictionaries take up quite enough space, thank you!) The MSKLC program enabled me to make one general keyboard for Western European Languages by defining "dead keys", so all I have to do now is switch between one multilingual keyboard and the one for my non-Western language. I mention this because he does not address typing issues in this book, and it is a necessary consideration, especially (for example) when faced with the possibility of having to spend months learning how to write a right-to-left script, and considering that the handwritten forms in some languages differ significantly from the printed ones. And good luck trying to find a textbook on how to do that longhand! So the typing issue is very important.

He also discusses using the IPA. I would also recommend the IPA Handbook for anyone looking for the computer codes for the IPA symbols. But for those who have trouble going to the new technology, he also describes how to set up regular paper flashcards, too. According to the author, if one uses paper flashcards, knowing how to use the IPA is even more important.

Although the book seems a bit wordy and possibly repetitive at first, it is organized to get the concepts across, which are needed to understand WHY some methods work and others don't.. I really think a young person in school could benefit from a lot of the information here and use it to make more effective use of his study time. The core of the book is really about the effective use of a Spaced Repetition System. An SRS system such as the Anki cards can be used for most any subject, not just languages.

The book is really a good buy for the money. It appears the author is planning to generate his real income from the language-training packages he is developing for the phonetics for various languages. I cannot comment on those as he is not working on any packages for a language that I am interested in, according to the website. The language-training packages sound like a phenomenally good idea, though, but as far as it concerns anyone not interested in the ones on the list, he would have to do it the hard way and find a really accurate list of the IPA symbols for his language and learn the sounds from one of the various websites that have IPA sound clips. And find some good lists of words paired up for contrasting "Twin" or sounds or "minimal pairs" and hopefully find a native speaker who can record them for you. Which is what the internet is supposed to be good for: helping you find things, -- and people.

I was introduced to the IPA through "Pronounce it Perfectly in French." The Barron's series would work for anyone interested of course, in what they have to offer. So there is a market out there for putting together audio materials for languages other than French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese! In the meantime, I guess we have to do it the hard way. This book is, I think, encouraging for a beginner and also helpful for those who have failed attempts at language learning and couldn't understand why they failed. It certainly helped me when I seemed to have become absolutely stuck in trying to use the internet to find resources for learning my chosen (non-European) language. It certainly gave me a nice boost.

Wyner's method of creating flashcards sounds good, but it is incredibly time-consuming to implement. They are a pain in the ass to make and I gave up after about 20 cards. If you've got unlimited time and patience, his ideas could help you. Just not very practical for me.

I really loved this book; it was funny while still being clear about how langauge and memory work. While it doesn't teach you how to learn a specific language, it gives you the process of how to learn and language, accompanied by resources for learning several specific languages. The website, fluent-forever.com was also infinitely helpful!

I really loved this book; it was funny while still being clear about how langauge and memory work. While it doesn't teach you how to learn a specific language, it gives you the process of how to learn and language, accompanied by resources for learning several specific languages. The website, fluent-forever.com was also infinitely helpful!

Inspiring with great insights. Best are that each one of us must learn, we can't actually be taught and that we learn to recall rather than memorizing. These are key. And then the way to learn to recall with tech that is effective. So impressed.

This book will certainly empower you to get back to learning other languages. It's got plenty of references to web sites that will help you learn your target language(S) for free. If your just starting out language learning this is a great book. But most of the techniques are common sense. that's why I don't give it five stars; because you've probably thought of these before just never put them into practice. ;)

I have been studying various languages for many years. Over that period of time, I have learned a number of things that work for me. Gabriel has written a book that is full of great advice about learning foreign languages. If you are just learning your first foreign language, I highly recommend you consider purchasing this book and get yourself off to a great start. Wish I had something like this back in the day when I first started. For those who have been studying languages longer in life, I think you will pick up a number of helpful suggestions to improve your study time. I know I did. The book is very easy to read, and is a great resource to have on the shelf when you have finished reading it. Also, Gabriel's website has many resources that you may find useful in your language learning journey. The website really completes the book and offers you even more value with updated links and language resources.

Well written, convincing. I'm on for the ride, never before having been interested in the slow, painful acquisition of another language. Gabe Wyner makes it look easy, and after all, if any infant can do it, I can too.

This is an excellent book. It describes the methodology developed by Gabriel Wyner to learn ANY language quickly and efficiently on your own. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in learning a second ... or third... language.

An excellent meta-guide for language learning. Summarizes the different approaches very clearly and fluently, with practical examples. If you are serious about learning a language (any language) you should read this.

The author convinces the reader he/she can learn can learn any language and can have fun doing so, in fact can become a polyglot if he/she so desires. Relearning German was a nostalgia trip for this reader.

Over the years I have read many websites, books, and the like in attempts to acquire the 'ultimate' approach to learning a foreign tongue (I study German, Russian, and Spanish... and am contemplating picking up Italian and Portuguese eventually). I ordered this book on a whim, despite not knowing all that much about the author (I later remedied that)... Without a doubt, I must admit this to be one of the single greatest purchases I've made so far as my studies go. I will not go into detail about the contents of the book, as that would defeat the purpose of your buying it; but, I highly recommend it to anyone truly wanting to speak another language. (I've already recommended it to two fellow linguaphiles)... Simply put, this book is a must-have.

Absolutely on target.
I'm already using his free french pronunciation guide and the free anki app on my phone. He is clear and easy to follow. And his system seems to be working for me after many years and many tries to master the language.

Have purchased the Kindle version of this book and about half way through. So far it is brilliant and telling me the tools to use to fast track my language learning. Have tried to learn French (at university) and failed miserably and now undertaking Spanish classes.
Am so impressed with this book that I have ordered the paper version, as this will be easier to use later on when I want to put all the tips and tools into action and can flip back and forwards through the paper version. Will post an updated review later when I finish this book.
Have read Benny Lewis's 'Fluent in 3 Months' but think this book is much better and better researched.

Some great language learning ideas. The biggest personal application I found was the idea that it is indeed possible. A good buy if you're interested in learning a new language but don't have the money or time for classes. Regardless of the method you're using, I recommend this book.