How to Learn A Foreign Language in One Hour

How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in One Hour

In his article entitled, “How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in One Hour”, author Tim Ferris (pictured) details his techniques or what he calls “deconstructing” a foreign language. His argument is that by deconstructing the foreign language main elements such as alphabet, key grammatical structures, rules of pronunciation and sentence structure, you can gain a basic understanding of just how the foreign language functions. That way you can relatively easily determine if you will be able to pursue fluency in communicating in that foreign language within a reasonable amount of time.

How to Learn Any Foreign Language

His general belief system is similar to my own in that I state in my foreign language learning techniques book entitled, “You Can Learn A Foreign Language” that if a foreign language is similar in grammar and structure or pronunciation to your own first language (L1), then it should be fairly easy to acquire using your first language as a point of reference. An example would be a native Spanish speaker learning another foreign language such as Italian, Portuguese or even French. These foreign languages are all in the same language family.

On the contrary, if the foreign language that you are considering is vastly different in structure, grammar or pronunciation to your own, then you will likely tend to have increased difficulty in acquiring that foreign language. That is not to say that you cannot learn a foreign language radically different from your own first language, but simply that learning that foreign language will have greatly increased difficulty for you in comparison to a foreign language in your first language family group.

Languages Come in Families

Languages, like people, come in families. In my book, I go into detail about language families and which foreign languages are grouped into the same ones. English, for example, is in the same language family as German – not French and Spanish as many language learners initially believe. While there are a substantial number of true word cognates between the three languages, which often can help considerably with communications, there is a distinct “caveat”. What is it, exactly? It is the presence of a considerable number of false cognates. That is to say, words which look and are spelled in similar manner but have very different meanings in the two languages.

An Anomaly of the Chinese Language

But being in the same language family can also have its problems and idiosyncrasies for unwary foreign language learners. Chinese is a good example of this. Although there are nine major “dialects” of Chinese, most of them are virtually unintelligible to speakers of the other Chinese dialects or variants. Speakers of Cantonese cannot “talk” directly to speakers of Mandarin, although they can read the written form of Mandarin since most of the dialects in Chinese have the same written form! They can easily read and understand each other’s writing, but cannot speak to one another.

Treat Language as a Sport

Author Ferris advises would-be foreign language learners to “treat language learning as a sport”. Learn the rules of the language first to determine if you’ll be able to manage it, before investing any substantial amount of time in trying to learn a foreign language which may be somewhat “out of reach” or at the very minimum, a “broad stretch” for you to acquire up to even a mediocre level. His clearly laid out and well-defined points are well taken in my opinion.

Learn a Foreign Language

Can you learn a foreign language in one hour? Normally, most certainly not. But you could do enough deconstruction of a foreign language in one hour, more or less, to determine how well or how difficult it would potentially be for you to learn that foreign language. This could definitely go a long way in helping to avoid the disappointments and frustrations of trying to learn a foreign language that was too far out of your league for easy acquisition. And that my dear potential foreign language learner, is certainly something well worth considering.



Prof. Larry M. Lynch is an EFL Teacher Trainer, Intellectual Development Specialist, author and speaker. He has written ESP, foreign language learning, English language teaching texts and hundreds of articles used in more than 100 countries. Get your FREE E-book,"If you Want to Teach English Abroad, Here's What You Need to Know" by requesting the title at: lynchlarrym@gmail.com Need a blogger or copywriter to promote your school, institution, service or business or an experienced writer and vibrant SEO content for your website, blog or newsletter? Then E-mail me for further information.

Part 2 How to Read Your Way to Foreign Language Fluency in 30 Days or Less

Let’s Get Started Reading Your Way to Foreign Language Fluency

In this part two we now get into more precise details of what you’ll need to do in order to effectively read your way to foreign language fluency in 30 days or less. Either online or an actual printed newspaper, if available in your target foreign language, will get you started nicely.

Read the Newspaper Aloud Daily

Get a newspaper in your target language, in our example case Spanish. Read articles from it aloud – daily. Do this for at least one hour daily in sessions of 15 minutes or 30 minutes if necessary. If your schedule allows time for more; 90 minutes or a couple of hours or so of reading aloud daily, then do it when you can. Remember, you’re only going to keep this up for 30 days at the most. Start off by reading a short article or classified ad aloud and be sure to record yourself doing so. You’ll use the recording later to prove to yourself that this technique actually does work. And yes, it really does work and work quite well, as a matter of fact. Just be sure to read each and every day, without fail, for the entire 30-day period. Record yourself (digitally or on cassette tape) no more than once at the end of each week. When your 30-day period is up, record yourself at the end of the month. Now listen to the first recording you made of yourself and then compare it to your latest recording. After listening to and comparing both, feel free to grin like a Cheshire cat and generously pat yourself on the back as much as you’d like. You deserve it.

Where to Get the Reading Materials

If you happen to live in a location where Spanish or your target foreign language newspapers are not available, don’t fret. Just go online and dig up one or two. For Spanish as a second or foreign language, here are some online Spanish daily newspapers for starters:

1. El País (España)
2. La Nación (La Argentina)
3. El Pais (Colombia)
4. El Tiempo (Colombia)
5. El Universo (Ecuador)
6. El Nacional (Venezuela)
7. El Siglo (Panamá)
8. El Clarín (La Argentina)
9. Listín Diario (La Repúbica Dominicana)
10. El Nuevo Día (Puerto Rico)

An Interesting, Fun and Informative Exercise

This can truly be quite a fun and informative exercise when done regularly, as your foreign language skills grow almost daily. Not only will your Spanish or other foreign language vocabulary, pronunciation and communicative skills rocket skyward, but you’ll be developing an in-depth knowledge of the foreign language in context along with geography, cultural and lifestyle elements too if you focus on a particular country. Do the crossword puzzles, read the comics, check out the classifieds and try out the recipes too. Just remember to have lots of fun and enjoy the experience. If you need any assistance or would like more suggestions, just drop me an e-mail. I’ll be happy to help if I can.

Good Luck.


Prof. Larry M. Lynch is an EFL Teacher Trainer, Intellectual Development Specialist, prolific writer, author and public speaker. He has written ESP, foreign language learning, English language teaching texts and hundreds of articles used in more than 100 countries. Get your FREE E-book, "If you Want to Teach English Abroad, Here's What You Need to Know" by requesting the title at: lynchlarrym@gmail.com Need a blogger or copywriter to promote your school, institution, service or business or an experienced writer and vibrant SEO content for your website, blog or newsletter? Then E-mail me for further information.

How to Read Your Way to Foreign Language Fluency in 30 Days or Less

The Four Basic English Language Skills

As any well-versed English or other foreign language teacher knows there are four basic skills to most foreign languages. These are reading, writing, listening and speaking. You might note that I just said “most foreign languages”. Why? Because, believe it or not, there are some languages which do not have a well-defined written form, or NO written form at all. There are in fact, a number of languages which have a purely “oral or spoken” tradition. In such cases, there is no literature to speak of. There may well be a strong tradition of story-telling however, frequently accomplished through skilled historians / story-tellers called “Griots”.

Literacy in English and Other Foreign Languages

Most foreign languages by far, do contain an alphabet or characters which allow the foreign language to be written. The written character forms may be unique and highly different from the Roman alphabet used in the English language, therefore initially incomprehensible to foreign language learners at first, but that will be acquired over time with intensive study and not a modicum of patience on the part of the foreign language learner. Consider Asian, Middle Eastern, African and Eastern European languages, for examples of other alphabet and spoken language character sets.

Reading is Fundamental

Since reading is a fundamental English or foreign language basic skill, you can, should and will certainly use it to tackle most foreign languages. Actually, if you want to ramp up your English or other foreign language vocabulary, pronunciation, reading comprehension and foreign language fluency in record time – we’ll say substantial improvement in one month, 30 days or even less - then you could literally read your way to increased foreign language skills easily in that amount of time. I’ll almost guarantee it if you’re truly persistent.

Use Reading to Improve Foreign Language Skills Fast

Since I live and teach English as a foreign language in Colombia, we’ll use Spanish as our initial example. Most other foreign languages can be improved using the same or similar techniques, as long as they have a well-defined written form and available literature online which you can access freely and easily. If you do need any help, you might try contracting a tutor for a couple of weeks or so to guide you through pronunciation, word formation, some basic grammar aspects and connected speech elements in your target foreign language. Use a portable tape or digital recorder to capture the sounds and pronunciation modeling from your tutor for later and on-going use. One seemingly small, but significant key point I’d like to insert here is this:

A Key Foreign Language Speech Pattern Modeling Point

If you’re a man, try to get a male tutor for your pronunciation and speech practice. If you’re a woman however, then try to get a female foreign language tutor of speech model. Men and women have some very distinctive and noticeable differences in the native language speech patterns, usage and connected speech elements. It has been my experience that ultimately it will make a difference in the way you sound and in the way you use the foreign language. No, I’m not a male chauvinist you-know-what by any means, I’m a university foreign languages professor – trust me on this, it matters. As an example of what I’m referring to, just turn on a newscast or two and listen to both a male and a female newscaster. Then compare what you hear and you should immediately see what I mean.

In part two of this article post we get into the precise details of what you’ll need to do in order to effectively read your way to foreign language fluency in 30 days or less. See you then.


Prof. Larry M. Lynch is an EFL Teacher Trainer, Intellectual Development Specialist, prolific writer, author and public speaker. He has written ESP, foreign language learning, English language teaching texts and hundreds of articles used in more than 100 countries. Get your FREE E-book, "If you Want to Teach English Abroad, Here's What You Need to Know" by requesting the title at: lynchlarrym@gmail.com Need a blogger or copywriter to promote your school, institution, service or business or an experienced writer and vibrant SEO content for your website, blog or newsletter? Then E-mail me for further information.