Don’t fall for language-learning scams
Every week or so I see mysterious advertisements like “I talked in Spanish after only 15 days”, or “Discover the secret to learning a language in 10 days”.
They say they use a sort of an “accelerated learning methodology” that will remove the hidden blockage that had always stopped you from learning a language. How amazing is that?
Of course, in the real world, there is no such thing as a “secret” for learning languages in magic ways, as if there was a kind of conspiracy of language schools, hiding the “real” learning methods from you.
But how can we tell the scam from the legit in language learning?
Above all, there is the “no effort” component. As for the case of losing weight, learning a language requires working on the right things for a considerable amount of time, in the order of the months, not just some days, surely not 20 minutes during 10 days, just sitting on a coach as shown in the advertisement video.
Now, “effort” doesn’t equal “suffering”. Language mentor Lydia Machova explains that one of the principles of effective language learning is that it has to be fun. The reason is that when it’s not fun, you rely on your willpower, but your motivation will fade away sooner or later, and you’ll end up dropping it.
Wait, but in the “magic method” explanatory video they present the neurological foundations of it, they even show how the brain gets involved in this kind of learning, so how can it be just a scam? Well, they just try to present themselves as “scientific-based”, but of course, they avoid giving us any reference to an actual research publication in a scientific journal: scientists are not their public.
The actual product promoted by one of the scams is just a collection of CDs that contain audio in the target language. The fact that the product is delivered in CD format makes me think that it’s oriented to the senior population because otherwise, it would be just a digital download. I’m not going to say that hearing the CDs is a complete waste of time, but being exposed to audio for listening comprehension is just one aspect of language learning, and for sure it’s one you are not going to master by listening to only 4 CDs.
One last thing that shocks me about the magical CD-based method is that the advertisement itself is 15 minutes long! Who has the time for watching the whole thing, and still want to “save time” by using a magical method instead of actually taking the time to learn?
If you want to be exposed to speech in your target language, there are many free podcasts and videos for that. There are very good guides about how to immerse yourself in the language you want to learn practically for free. But of course, the “magic formula” vendors don’t tell it to you: it’s their “secret”, this time a real one. If you are aware of the wealth of internet-based resources for language learning, of course, you are not going to buy some random CDs, for which most of us would need to first get a CD reader.
Don’t fall for language learning scams. Instead, follow the (mostly free) advice of real language mentors, like Benny Lewis, Olly Richards, Lydia Machova, Steve Kauffman and many others (Google them), who provide you guidance on how to learn a language by yourself.
