In a Chinese martial arts novel, the naive protagonist Yu is thrown into a world full of fierce Kung Fu masters, where he struggles for his life. After having his crush held hostage and himself forced to take on a time bomb in the form of a poison, during his flight he accidentally discovers an otherwise inaccessible cave. There lies buried a scroll that introduces him to an arcane school of martial arts, that goes contrary to many commonly held beliefs and practices of the time, but is extremely effective. This allows him to become stronger than many hard-working experts of his day.

I love this story very much, as I can relate to it strongly. I find it makes a really important point:

By finding a better approach than the world around you uses, you can become the best at what you do.

When I was 19, I have made a decision to study in a college in Germany, and I wanted strongly to start next September. However, I didn’t speak any German at that moment. It was shortly before Christmas, so that left me with about nine months time to get from “zero” to “good enough for college”.

It’s pretty clear I would  never get there using the approach typically seen in schools. I had experience learning Russian in the school, and I realized even then that simply following a course or a textbook was way to slow. I tried various approaches, until I figured out on my own what pretty much every polyglot tells you – you need to expose yourself to a lot of comprehensible input – the more the better.

I started with simple (bilingual) comics and children books, and progressed to more advanced fiction.

After few weeks reading six hours daily or more, with occasional Anki practices on my phone in between (while still studying full time) I knew this is the way to go. I got to the level where you can understand audiobooks (without the written text) in August (i.e. in less than a year), and never had any linguistic problems during my studies.

Looking back, the method I used, simply learning language in context and having fun, makes sense. In fact it’s simple.

Curiously, when I tried to convince other language learners to try out the same method, some reactions were that I was crazy for not sticking to “how everybody does it”. And I  could not convince them – would keep using methods obviously ineffective.

But I understand it’s not always easy to get out of the comfort zone to test new things. Maybe it’s the comfort in familiar things that makes people stay average.

So my message is: you do not need an inborn talent, but the right method. Always look for a better method, in all areas of life.

This is how this site can help – implement minor improvements that make a major difference.

Secret #1 : More comprehensible input means more skill

Secret #2 : More fun means more skill

Secret #3 : More creativity means more skill