I want to talk to language learners. Fellow travelers on the road to language fluency.

I had asked for opinions about converting this blog into a book. I am now inclined to start another project instead. I want to interview language learners, people who are successful and those who are not successful.
I want to ask about motivation, what worked, what did not work, what is easy, what is difficult, unique experiences etc.

I want to talk to you over Skype and possibly I might interview some people face to face. I will record these discussions and transcribe some. I want to collect these discussions and pick the best ones to put up here on my blog and podcast, and also to put into a book. Is anyone interested? Please let me know here, or email me at steve(at)lingq.com.

I imagine most of the conversations will be in English, but I would be happy to do the interviews in other languages that I speak well enough to carry it out, or else find someone else to conduct the interview in that language.

Comments

[John B.]

I think this could be a very interesting book! I have been reading "como aprendí inglés" edited by Tom Miller which is a collection of essays by 55 Latinos on how they learned English. I found it to be a fascinating and often moving collection even though it is not really so much about the methodology. Although it does have that sort of thing, I found the most interesting part to be the mental and emotional process and the personal asides. At least that's what I have been getting out of it. Unfortunately for most non-Spanish speakers, I have not seen this book in English. You may want to take a look at it. I would love to read more of this sort of thing as I was able to relate very closely to the stories, coming from an immigrant family and having spent many years floundering around trying to learn different languages myself. I know how hard it can be to learn a skill such as language fluency, especially before the widespread availability of information on language learning for laypersons, now easily accessible on the internet. Good luck with this!

[Mairo Vergara]

I am definitely interested!It would be such a great book!

[Valina Eckley]

Steve,
I will have to agree that this sounds like a great idea. I would be willing to be interviewed, but I don't think I want to talk just about me and my personal experience with languages, but I can talk about my experience working in the in one of the large 英会話 schools, and then freelancing afterwords. I think my experiences as a teacher who has rejected the traditional language teaching methods might be something you can add to this project

Val

[Prateek]

It's an interesting idea and I hope you explore it!

Just a caution: if you choose to interview only people near you, you run the risk of a biased sample. For example, I'd wager that most of the people frequenting your blog already have some hidden mental agenda (not in a bad way, though).

[David]

Hi Steve!

My name is David. I discovered you just this afternoon through your YouTube videos. I speak five languages in order of fluency: English, French, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese. I thought I was the man...but then I saw your videos! Wow!!! I feel we have a lot in common when it comes to learning languages. For me I have to somehow "like" the language. That includes the way it sounds and the culture of the people who speak it. I used a crazy method for learning Portuguese in Brazil and I'd like to use it for other languages such as Thai. I write lists of vocab that I want to know and ask a native speaker to teach me. I dislike text books as they never cover what I want to know! Anyways, just thought I'd introduce myself. Thanks.

Regards,
David
www.freechineseblog.com

[Jim]

Brendan O'Kane might be a good interview candidate. He took Chinese clases for a few years, but then went to China and really found his groove. With a lot of hard work, he became famously fluent in Chinese over the last few years.

Linguist left speechless

[Ana]

Hi, Steve,
this sounds quite interesting. I agree with Prateek, it would be a good idea if you make an effort to also find people that are not around you or using LingQ.
Anyway, I would like to participate if you think my English is enough for this, or if you feel like doing so in Portuguese.
I imagine this would take you some weeks, I wouldn't mind if I'm put at the end of the list so I can work a little bit more on my speaking.

[Steve Kaufmann]

Of course we want a variety of views. I am thinking of going to Europe to attend Expolingua in Berlin, and there is a language conference in Alicante. (My wife likes to golf). I might also take in the Frankfurt bookfair and a conference in Berlin on Web 2.0. In between I might visit Italy as well. A major goal would be to write and record people talking about language. So I might start with some volunteers here and then broaden my net. We shall see. All advice and comments appreciated.

[doviende]

Hi Steve, i'm a fellow Vancouverite, and i'd be interested in chatting some time if you like. Over the years i've dabbled in many languages, but when i tried to learn from textbooks i got from the library, i never really got anywhere past the beginner stages.

Last year I changed strategies and quit my job to enroll in a full-time chinese immersion program at SFU, and then went to china to continue in an immersion program at Zhejiang university in Hangzhou, China. I'm continuing my chinese study on my own, with a whole bunch of new methods that seem to be working better.

I'm eager to apply everything i've learned to other languages again, but i'm trying to stick with chinese for a while longer until my reading and speaking is more confident....it's so much more fun when i can just go to the library and check out a novel to read, rather than reading textbooks.

let me know if you'd like to meet for coffee some time in vancouver.

[Tom]

There is a book along these lines already although I'm sure there is room for more cases:

Success With Foreign Languages: Seven Who Achieved It and What Worked for Them
by Earl W. Stevick

[Matt]

What would be equally insightful is is you talked to failed language learners. I don't think this has been done much, even by the academics that you revile.

[Richard]

This blog might be of interest.

http://leilujapan.free.fr/

[Jeff]

I want to interview language learners, people who are successful and those who are not successful.

Sounds interesting. Hope you can get a good cross section of learners.

I'd suggest that my friend Scott talk to you about being in the latter group, but I'm afraid he'll beat me up if I do :-)

[Gábor]

Hi, Steve, I'd be interested in this project just as well and I'd be happy to help you with it. If you feel like wanting to have a conversation with me (over Skype...or personally, but I don't think you'll be coming to Hungary anytime soon :P) just contact me via e-mail. I'm a hungarian student by the way.

[Jack]

Hi, Steve, i'm simply fascinated with your ideas of language learning and i have always been applying that on my English studies. I'd like to be interviewed through Skype although i've never used it before =P

I'm a high school student from Hong Kong actually. I'm a native Cantonese speaker, and I speak intermediate English(still make a lot of mistakes) and mandarin(can't speak well but i'm ok on listening), also i can speak very little German(love the language and spent some time on it, but now concentrating on English). So I think I can be interviewed in English and Cantonese as you like.

Waiting to read the book =)

[Gabriela]

Hi, Steve, I am one of your distant students from Prague (The Czech Republic). I really enjoy all your podcasts and articles! I started to print your articles so that I can have them at hand whenever I need them. I am a former professor of Czech language (now already retired), so in case you start learning Czech, I am ready to help you with that - and to prepare Czech audio-articles for you. I admire your perfectly worked out system for learning words and phrases. I started to use it and I firmly hope that your system will help me to improve and broaden my English vocabulary. Thank you for doing such an excellent work for us. As I have a special blog devoted to problems of spoken English, I decided to translate some of your articles into Czech language for my readers. I hope that some of them will become users of your special system, too. Take care! Gabriela from Prague

[João José]

Olá Steve, como vai? I'm just amazed with all this languages enviroment I've discovered a few months! I was looking for it and I'm glad it exists!
I'd like to let you know that I'm with you on this task!
My native language is Portuguese (I'm from Brazil)and I'm fluent in English, intermediate level in Spanish and I understand quite well Italian and a bit of French.
If you need me I'm here for you. Tchau!