Earlier this year I had the pleasure of teaching Lucas, a Brazilian who works in localisation services in Shenzhen, China.
We decided to set a study period of four months. I usually ask that my students commit to learning for at least four months so they can notice the language growth and make considerable gains.
In Lucas' case he decided to study for 5 sessions a week with each session lasting around 25 minutes. This was a good decision as the "curve of forgetting" hardly affected him and he could build up his Indonesian at a good pace. Outside class he reviewed flashcard decks that I prepared for him for around 10-20 minutes a day.
Below are 3 videos documenting his progress at 2 weeks, 3 months and 4 months respectively. Although he is a great student both Lucas' and I feel the results he experienced would be typical for any student as long as they were ready to to stay committed for those four months.
So I hope you enjoy watching his progress and I hope this can inspire you to take the leap into learning a foreign language!
We decided to set a study period of four months. I usually ask that my students commit to learning for at least four months so they can notice the language growth and make considerable gains.
In Lucas' case he decided to study for 5 sessions a week with each session lasting around 25 minutes. This was a good decision as the "curve of forgetting" hardly affected him and he could build up his Indonesian at a good pace. Outside class he reviewed flashcard decks that I prepared for him for around 10-20 minutes a day.
Below are 3 videos documenting his progress at 2 weeks, 3 months and 4 months respectively. Although he is a great student both Lucas' and I feel the results he experienced would be typical for any student as long as they were ready to to stay committed for those four months.
So I hope you enjoy watching his progress and I hope this can inspire you to take the leap into learning a foreign language!
Week 2
Wow, I was very happy with this start. Although of course there was still so much he didn't know you can see he could confidently put sentences together that would be understandable for Indonesians and he had no trouble understanding most of my questions, Even though I admit I was a little over confident with the level of questions I gave him, because I wanted to test just how much he was starting with. What do you think? Not bad for two weeks?
After 3 Months of Study
I was really pleased with the result of this interview. He showed me he could remember most of what we had studied over the previous 3 months and he was fairly confident in the way he replied to my questions. A bit of hesitation is normal, the main thing is that he is creating his own sentences and responding to questions that I had not formally prepped him for. What do you think? Would you be happy with this result after 3 months? Personally I know this is further than a lot of people get after even 3 years of study at school. The reason of course is the frequency of study. This is the key. After that I put it down to the communicative approach I used to teach him.
After Just 4 Months of Study!
This interview went for around 35 minutes. We spoke Indonesian the whole time and Lucas did very well. We spoke on a range of topics to do with his daily life and surroundings and he could respond with novel utterances. If he moved to Indonesia with this level of Indonesian I have no doubt he would make friends quickly with non-English speakers and it wouldn't take him long to reach a working proficiency. He has broken the barrier to learning this language and I can confidently say that now Lucas speaks Indonesian.
Stay tuned for more updates. Hopefully on his next trip to Indonesia we can get some videos of him speaking to some of the locals.
Stay tuned for more updates. Hopefully on his next trip to Indonesia we can get some videos of him speaking to some of the locals.
Feel free to get in touch with me to learn from me, collaborate or just discuss language learning in general. You can click the contact form above this paragraph or email me at Hugh_Elliott@outlook.com. I am always happy to meet new people, especially those excited about language learning.
Thanks for joining me and Lucas on his journey, I hope any undertaking you embark on is even more awesome!