How to practice speaking skills alone?

Now, I am talking about English. It's quite possible and not even difficult to get good at speaking English without ever talking with anyone. It's harder when it comes to other languages, but the most common languages are almost as easy as English.
When it comes to other languages - learn IPA, and you will get close enough. It's not perfect, of course, but it's good enough to get you understood and able to correct your mistakes.

1) Speak. Say everything you are learning. If you go to Duolingo, read all the sentences and words out loud. You don't need to put in any air in your speaking, so that you can do it in a public library or a bus or anywhere without getting attention. Just try it. Read out loud this sentence without any sound - you HEAR your voice reading this. You feel your mouth, tongue, lips making the movements.
Learn the pronunciation rules, and IPA, and get an estimation of how you think the words should be pronounced, and then compare your estimation to reality, and correct your pronunciation accordingly.
"Repeat after ---". Parrot the words.

1) Read texts aloud. Record your speech. Listen to it and compare to a native speaker. Try to get it as close as possible.
If you are having difficulties getting some specific words to sound right, there's plenty of sites where people pronounce specific words. (Like Forvo, for example.)
Again, in English you probably can find every word pronounced by a native speaker somewhere online, in Navajo, not so likely.
Audiobooks are excellent for this purpose, and it doesn't matter if the books are modern or in public domain. The anciency of the language is irrelevant.
You can also read along with the native speaker. You will be able to spot the differences better this way. :-D Make notes on what you usually miss and practice that.

2) Speak about things in your chosen language. It doesn't much matter if you get it right or not. Speak clearly, do your best, but don't focus on if you get it right. You don't know. You can't know. But speaking a lot makes you better at speaking. Yes, it is highly possibly you develop some bad habits or learn something wrong, but it will be quickly corrected, if you ever get to use the language in real situation. If you don't, then nobody cares - or should care. Also, that's why you would be doing the first thing I suggested, to get it right. THERE it is important to get it as right as you possibly can.

3) Sing.

4) Practice tongue twisters.

Practice what is most difficult to you, what you have most problems with, and pronounce it loud and clear (at least when you are alone). Pronounce the words as if you were talking to a person who can't hear very well, or if you were trying to teach someone how to pronounce it correctly. It's really easy to mumble and try to be quick, so as people can smooth over the possible errors and problems, but what will you learn of that? You will learn to mumble, you will learn to pronounce the words wrong and YOU WILL LEARN THAT YOU CAN'T LEARN TO SPEAK WELL.

So... it's waning off again

I spent a couple of days creating myself an Autumn wardrobe. Apparently, it's not a capsule wardrobe, though... well. What ever. Nothing to do with languages.

I have been Duolingoing the whole time, though.

I really hate the Duolingo's... whatever it's called. You know, that thing that says what is right and what is wrong. It accepts a lot of wrong answers but then starts whining about petty details.
Like, in Danish, "a horse, the horse, horses, the horses" goes "en hest, hesten, heste, hestene", but it accepts "hästar" for horses, which is Swedish, so it's wrong for Danish. Duolingo is teaching me wrong. Which means that I can't use it to learn Danish. 

Well... it's not that bad, because it's a language and it's OK to learn it "wrong", because you WILL correct it as you go on. We all make these mistakes in our mother tongue all the time because we learned it "wrong" when we were young. You know, the "I always thought it was Dalmation!" things. 

I just recently noticed the "leagues". It is fascinating how competitive I am... just give me a challenge and I will do more. 
Unfortunately, it works only for a certain level.

Language learning tips

 So... I was studying kanji, and thought about the Chinese word 白 bái. It has over 20 different meanings in English, and how screwed one would be if one learned all the different meanings by heart... and how screwed one would be if one didn't learn any of them, because "one cannot say one knows a language unless one knows all the different meanings of a word and how it is used in context, with other words etc. etc. etc." 
No, you don't need to know ALL the different forms and ways of every word. It is quite enough to learn "白 - snow, white". All the different meanings will come clear (白) in the future as you learn more. And in the future the meaning "白 anti-Communist" becomes clear 白 and obvious. I as a Finn know this already. ;-) We use the word "white" in the same sense.

So, go ahead and learn L2 words as direct translations of the L1 words. It won't harm you, limit you, make it harder to learn a language etc. etc. as all the nay-sayers and fear mongerers say.

30 Incredibly Effective Tips and Tricks to Learn a New Language
(I am posting the list here, because sometimes pages disappear. There is a lot more information on the site, so do follow the link.)

1. Choose a Word of the Day
2. Practice With Native Speakers.
3. Take Notes Whenever You Connect With The Language
(watching television, YouTube, internet surfing, reading, listening, on the bus etc. etc.)
4. Sink or Swim/All or Nothing
(move to a place where target language is spoken and refuse to speak any other language)
5. Learn Cognates
6. Use an App
7. Focus on What’s Relevant/Most Important To You
8. Set up a Routine
9. Find and Attend Local Events
10. Remember why you started
11. Track Your Progress
12. Learn the Phrase “How do you say X?”
13. Learn What You Need
14. Pace Yourself: One Step at a Time (5-15 minutes of intensive studies 10 times during a day is more worth than 3 hours block of studies).
15. Study smarter, not harder.
16. Be kind to yourself - it's OK to make mistakes, you are learning, not mastering
17. Watching, reading, listening, and talking about the news in your new language
18. Food - cooking and eating
19. Use your social intelligence, intuition and natural instincts to interpret social situations; works both in real life social interaction and tv series/movies/videos
20. Watch Movies (Remember, there's the right way and the wrong way of doing this, too. Or the effective, functional way and the ineffective way with little if any results.)
21. Believe in Yourself
22. recreational entertainment in new language
23. Enough.
You have enough, enough time, resources, intelligence, talents, memory, what ever is needed to learn a new language.
Also, five new words is enough. Five minutes is enough. You CAN learn 100 words in an hour, but you don't need to. It's enough to learn five new words every day. Or less. It's enough.
24. Be Kind to Yourself
It's OK to make mistakes.
Slow is good enough.
Focus on what you have achieved, what you do, not on what you might/could/should.
25. role play in your new language, alone or with friends
26. Flashcards
27. Storytelling
28. Learn with a friend
29. Learn Synonyms (Er... I'm not convinced. But try it out.)
30. Immersion - AJATT

Some other ideas:

31. Eavesdrop on Local’s Conversations
32. Re-read Your Favorite Children’s Books in Your New Language
33. Start With High Frequency Words and Phrases.
34. Passive listening
35. Study pronunciation
36. Use all ways of learning; auditory, visual, tactile, reading-writing...
37. Learn Esperanto
38. Set Specific, Measurable Goals. (Instead of "learn French", "Learn 50 French food vocabulary terms and how to use them when at restaurant and cooking")
39. Carry a pocket dictionary
40. Make It Fun - Produce language in a fun way; write songs, comic strips, play, podcast, poem, short story... what ever rocks your boat.

DO NOT use the diglot weave technique. (replacing words in L1 with the same words in L2 - "Do you know where maito is? I need some for my kahvi." Don't mix languages, to support your brain to keep the different languages separate and to automate the language production. If you teach yourself to mix the languages, you will not be learning any new words, because your brain tells you the different language words are just synonyms. You will be talking Frenglish or Farsitalian or something. I know this, because I'm speaking triglot weave. I use the language I remember, be it Finnish, Swedish or English. Because most people I communicate with knows all three. (That is, my family. >:->) It makes it really hard to try to remember the correct word when speaking with monolinguals.)


Other things to think about: Why I Taught Myself 20 Languages by Timothy Doner
Just remember that when you start whining about knowing languages and fluency.

10.000 sentences... in one month?

10.000 Flashcards In One Month - and why you shouldn't do it

10.000 sentences... Let's say every sentence is five words long. Some are longer, some are shorter, but the average length of English sentences is five words. That's 50.000 words. That's a NaNoWriMo novel... :-D But, an average page in a book has some 300 words. 10.000 sentences give a book with 167 pages. Here's a list of 20 Best Books Under 200 Pages.
I wonder if I picked one of these books and read it every day in the language I'm trying to learn, how much would I remember at the end of the month? And how much language would I learn?

One could take The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho. Or Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, though that's a bit too short...

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
To Room Nineteen by Doris Lessing
Boxing the Compass by Sandy Florian
The Giver by Lois Lowry
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
Sula by Toni Morrison
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore
Wide Sargasso Sea by  Jean Rhys
The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Wilful Disregard by Lena Andersson
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan

A lot of children's books have about 200 pages. I think Eva Ibbotson's children's books have about 250 pages each. Quick, short and - IMHO - enjoyable reading. Something I could reread every day for 30 days :-D

Thoughts about the 6 weeks' challenge

I have a plan on how to use the six weeks the most effective way. There is though a small problem there. How to learn to read a language is VERY DIFFERENT from how to learn to speak a language. And I want both... :-(

Here's something about how to learn to speak a language

One important difference is that if you want to learn to read fiction, you will get very sufficient with past tense in third person singular. When you speak, you use mostly first person singular in present tense.
The vocabulary is very different from every day speech to literacy. When you speak you use very simple language, ignore grammar, don't give a crap about such things like artistic expression and style, the word frequency lists are your friend and you can manage with phrase  book samples and replacing words in sentences. When you read, you are trying to understand the language of someone who is very adequate in using it, who cares a lot about grammar (or whose editor does), the style, impression and expression are important, the words are much more variable and difficult, and you don't get to ask for clarification, explain anything, or even speak.
So... when people are learning a language, they should actually be getting into hacking the language.
And, I... I just want to read and receive information. And there... there really are no shortcuts. I wish there was some sort of upload pack. :-( I don't do much with phrases and frequency lists...
But... 90% of free language courses are created for people who want to learn to speak the language... that is, not for me.

But, but... my 6 weeks challenge plan is based on all this, and it will make me able to use the language in all possible ways. It just causes some problems, because I have to change my attitude. I have attitude problems :-D

"You had one job..."

Or two. :-D
Started working with the Hebrew alphabets. Decided to make flashcards in stead of a poster. Can't find my "card condoms" (Trading card sleeves). Have to buy some.

Can't be bothered with the Karelian. It's easy and quick and I really should do it, but... uh.
I should also continue with my Finnish lesson and add all the necessary pronunciation. I like courses with pronunciation.

There was a language challenge "10.000 flashcards"at Language Learners' forum. One is to add 10.000 flashcards to one's pile and go through them in SRS at least once. (Or twice, perhaps - one initial round and then one repetition round.)
I don't think I have 10.000 flashcards. Speaks to my megalomaniac soul...

I found 50languages.com. Nice. There's my 50 languages easily packaged! Yay.
No, doesn't work like that. I am not that into Slavic languages. I found 28 I might be interested in. That's a great start :-D
There's 100 lessons in Chinese with audio, I assume it's the same for all languages.

Sentence mining, or 10.000 sentences

Ok, so there's a bit of misunderstanding about this going on, and not a lot of information.
I suppose people need... forms or something. "Take this, put it in, do this et voilà"

10.000 sentences at Learn Any Language Wiki

Yes, it really is that simple. You take 10.000 sentences, put them on flashcards (when digital, called SRS and suddenly is not flashcards, which are stupid >:->), and learn them. How you do that is your business.
But, the mistakes a lot of people make, are
- using ANY sentence, preferably someone else's...
- using READY WRITTEN "sentence packs", not writing them themselves
- NOT UNDERSTANDING EACH WORD IN THE SENTENCES. Because you are not to learn words but sentences. (rolling eyes).

One of the "things" with this is that YOU CHOOSE THE SENTENCES.
Which means that YOU have to THINK WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO USE THE LANGUAGE FOR and WHY ARE YOU STUDYING THE LANGUAGE.
Of course you can parrot someone else's choices, and you will learn the language, but the point with 10.000 sentences is that you remove the unnecessary junk of language learning. I mean, I have NEVER had the discussion "Hello, how are you? I'm fine, thank you, and how are you? I'm fine, too, thank you." in ANY language. 99% of Finnish courses online start with this practically useless crap, because that's what people think they need to learn.So, think of the situations you imagine you are going to experience and what you would like to be able to say and WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE RESPONSES.
It's all fine to say "Hello, my name is Ketutar, and I am a middle-aged Finnish woman, married, with no children, no pets, blah blah blah", but... who is really interested of any of that information?
"My name is...", sure. "What is your name?". "I am Finnish, where do you come from?". "I love animals, especially cats. What is your favorite animal?". "I want to go to this address, could you help, please?" "I would like to have a cup of tea, with milk, no sugar, and something sweet to eat with it. What kind of pastries do you have?" "No onions, thank you."...
Perhaps you don't plan on traveling as your first reason to learn a language, and then learning how to ask for directions is useless information. At this point of your learning. Maybe you would like to read books in your target language? My reasons to want to learn Russian is a) books, tv series and movies in Russian. b) the huge, amazing and skillful arts and crafts community of Russia, sharing a vast treasure chest of information in Russian only. After that there's plenty of other benefits of knowing Russian, and it would be wonderful to visit Russia some time, as a tourist. But that's in the future and secondary. This means that I should choose my 10.000 sentences from the books I want to read and from the artisan blogs I want to understand, not from phrase books or language courses (either in RL or on the Internet.)

Another thing is that YOU WRITE THE SENTENCE. You, personally, write down every letter, every sign, and you read it when you write it. This would be more effective, if you did it by hand, and not by computer. Nevertheless, using someone else's work robs you of this part of learning.
One of the goals of 10.000 sentences is that you are able to write the sentences. If you just copy something on the internet someone else wrote (or copied), do you know how to write it? Can you reproduce it on a piece of paper with no access to internet?

You find out how to PROPERLY PRONOUNCE the sentence and practice as many times as it takes for you to produce as good a pronunciation as you can. Record your pronunciation and compare with original. The point with this is that every time you see the sentence, you also hear it in your head properly pronounced, and soon you won't be able to separate the two. Every time you say it, you will pronounce it properly, and EVERY TIME YOU HEAR IT, you understand it.

Another thing is that YOU ARE REPEATING A SENTENCE YOU UNDERSTAND, NOT MEMORIZING SENTENCES.
There is a Finnish.. anecdote or something, called "hauki on kala" (pike is a fish). A student studies for biology test by repeating mindlessly the words from the text, and then cannot make any conclusions with this information, cannot expand the sentence, wouldn't be able to say what the pike is NOT, or mention other examples of fishes.
Now, language learning doesn't quite work this way, but this is the idea behind "The sentences should be learned without rote memorization. You will end up "memorizing" the sentences merely through repetition, but your goal should be understanding, not memorization."

Now, I didn't choose my sentences. Or, let's say, I didn't choose them to best fit my intentions with language learning, but because of the "that's the way to do it". I have decided to learn the 100 most commonly used words of Russian, so that's what I'm doing, and as they gave some sample sentences, and as people say "don't learn words, learn sentences", I'm going to learn the 100 most commonly used words in sentences, and what the sentences are, I don't care.
So my first sentence  is "Я живу в Москве"
This sentence is given as a sentence where the most common word in Russian is being used.

To do sentence mining properly, now it's time to understand it and every word in it. This is one part a lot of miners do wrong - or, more precisely, don't do at all. They just learn the sentence and move on.

Now, you are not to just learn the sentence as meaning "I live in Moskva", but you are to deconstruct the sentence.
The individual bits of the sentence are "I" (Я, by the way, is the 4th most common word in Russian), "to live", жить "in", в, and "Moskva" (the native name to Moscow), and IT IS THE DIFFERENCES FROM THE BASIC FORM THAT GIVES US THE INFORMATION WE WANT. Which means that WE NEED TO KNOW THE BASIC FORM to be able to know the difference... :-D

One difference is that the verb ends with -у, and not -ть. Checking other verb endings of 1.sing. I see that they all end with -у or -ю́. (I also notice that the other forms end differently, so Russian has verb conjugation in person. Now, I could learn the inflections the same way I did in school (я живу́, ты живёшь, он живёт, она живет, мы живём, вы живёте, они живу́т), which is actually a very good way of learning them, because it works as a mnemonic device - the repetition of same pattern. It also teaches the pronouns very effectively, but that's not the Sentence Mining way. So not going there.)

The other thing I learn from this sentence is "в Москве". Ah. The only reason I notice that is that I know Moskva is written with A in neutral, basic form.This is why it's important to actually use the native names of places when studying languages. So when using в, I need to remember to change the main word as well. I'll learn how as I go, but as for now, "in" will be "в + -е", not just в.

With this it's irrelevant if you use cloze deletion with your SRS, because the idea with this is the massive exposure to the language, not memorization. You are to SEE the sentences and HEAR them in your mind, if not ears, A LOT. Not just a couple of hours a day, no, a lot. Like ALL THE TIME.

"You’ve been mining your sentences diligently, but you still have trouble even following a conversation let alone participating, right? Maybe you still can’t follow your favorite anime. Right. OK, I have a question for you. How much Japanese are you listening to? Whatever your answer is, I can guarantee you that it hasn’t been enough for long enough yet. Which is why I suggest you: Listen to 10,000 hours of Japanese over the next 18 months."
—Khatzumoto at AJATT

Yeah... that's about 18 hours A DAY... He's not kidding with "ALL JAPANESE ALL THE TIME". 

6 weeks' challenge: Russian

Ok... so I'm back. For now.
I don't think I'll ever become a "superpolyglot", because I just lack the tenacity. Whatever. :-D

Anyway, Russian...
I'm trying on a new concept.

On my "6 weeks from zero to C2" plan, day one goes:
learn the alphabet
learn the numbers
deconstruct the language (apple is red)
thank you
good morning
100 most used words on flashcards
put the Omniglot phrases + vocabulary on flashcards
find a radio station of everyday music and talk and listen for 30 minutes of radio

The alphabet. Pretty straightforward. Except for и краткое, твёрдый знак and мягкий знак - short i, hard sign and soft sign. I mean, I know how they work, but remembering the names when reading out the alphabet... eh.
And the fracking esses. I have made cards to try to remember them, you know, like the classic children's alphabet pictures. Zebra, journal, Chekhov, tzar, chess and "shchuka" - the pike.
Why the pike, you might ask. Well... in my mind, the Russians used planes called "pike" during WWII against Finland. Firstly, it wasn't Russians, it was the Germans, and the planes weren't called "pike", but Stukas. The thing is that it's not even pronounced the same way,  Щ is more just another "shsh" sound, but it's SUPPOSED to be "shch" instead of "shsh". And why would the Russians - or anyone - name an airplane after a fish? Doesn't even make any sense! :-D But - mnemonic devices don't need to make any sense, they just need to work :-D I suppose flying fish fighters is a memorable picture.

The numbers are very straightforward as well.
Except for the number 40... :-D
I really like numbers. Oh, and the pronunciation... not so self-evident.

Deconstructing the language

The apple is red. => Яблоко красное.
It is John's apple. => Это яблоко Джона.
I give John the apple. => Я даю Джону яблоко.
We give him the apple. => Мы даём ему яблоко.

He gives it to John => Он даёт это Джону.
She gives it to him. => Она даёт это ему.

Is the apple red? => Яблоко красное?
The apples are red. => Яблоки красные.

I must give it to him. => Я обязан ему это дать.
I want to give it to her. => Я хочу ей это дать.
I'm going to know tomorrow. => Я узнаю завтра.
I have eaten the apple. => Я съел яблоко.
I can't eat the apple. => Я не могу есть яблоко.

useful phrases
Good morning - Доброе утро!
Thank you - Спасибо!

Top 100 Russian words
And here we went haywire... :-D

I love learning words. I love my flashcards. I love the parrot style. Yes, it works. You know, all these people who will tell you that you should absolutely not learn words because they are useless.

Sorry, bullshit.
They are not useless.
I agree in that if you ONLY have words and grammatical rules in your head, you wouldn't be able to use the language very much. The grammatical rules would be pretty... meaningless, the words... very... not fluid. :-D One would be able to make oneself understood, to some extent, get one's basic needs fulfilled, perhaps. "I thirsty".
Now, the pronunciation... with IPA it's possible one would have a pronunciation that's understandable, even when it would not be good. (Well... I actually managed to learn French pronunciation OK - some sounds are even "good". But it's just words.)
So, yes, one cannot learn a language by learning words like a parrot. BUT learning words like a parrot is not useless. That's about the way children learn languages.
All these "learn sentences, learn the words in sentences, not in itself" people forget the very important step of how kids learn languages.

How to Learn Any Language in Two Months, Part 2: SENTENCE MINING
"I put a little food on the table"
"I squeezed a little lemon on my avocado toast"
"I pooped a little on the carpet"

I need to know what is "food" and "table". I need to know what is "lemon" and "avocado toast". I need to know what is "poop" and "carpet". To be able to deduce the grammar "a little" and "on", I need to have the building blocks in between. I mean, how many kids say things like "little mouses" or "little sheeps"? If they had learned the word in context, they would use the correct plural form automatically... but they are deducting. One toy, many toys, one spoon, many spoons, one mouse, many mouses, one sheep, many sheeps...
I could be staring at a sentence in hours without it opening to me if I have NOTHING to go after. There is this story of this man who took a Portuguese book with him to a vacation, and he had basically nothing else to do but try to figure out the book. He had no dictionaries or anything else, just the text in Portuguese, a language he didn't know anything about. He managed to figure out the language well enough to be able to actually read and understand the book during his month-long vacation. Now, I believe he knew some language that is related to Portuguese, or at least some words,  to have SOMETHING to go by.
I mean, look at this and tell me what it is:

 So if you have the 1000 most common words of a language in your vocabulary, in their basic forms, suddenly the sentences make sense and it is possible for you to start deducting and associating and experimenting with sheeps and mouses, and realize that that's not right, and correct your sheep and mice, and the more you see the correct forms, the less you remember the wrong ones. You have to have SOMETHING to be able to USE the sentences.
I mean, you COULD learn to say "Как тебя зовут?" with perfect pronunciation, but if you don't know what you are saying... There is this story of a Swedish guy asking his Finnish friends how to say "I love you" in Finnish so that he can say that to girls on the ferry to Finland, and his friends tell him "minä olen hirvi". Which means "I am a moose". (Я лось in Russian, compared to я люблю тебя.)

This also goes for "don't translate" rule. A lot of people are getting their knickers in a twist because "they can't stop translating!!!". It's not a problem. You stop it when you know the language well enough. 
It's like learning to read. In the beginning we name each letter. We say it out loud. We follow the letters with our finger. Then you start reading the words as pictographs. Then you stop talking. You still say the word in your mind, but you don't say it out loud. Then you stop following the text with your finger. Then you stop voicing the text. Though I still do that. :-D Some people don't "read out loud" in their heads, I've heard. It makes them read faster. I'm OK with my reading speed :-D You start reading whole sentences instead of words, then whole pages instead of sentences, and at that point you are speed-reading. :-D 
The same thing happens with languages. In the beginning you are thinking in your mother tongue, about what you want to say. You don't do that with languages you are fluent in. You don't think what you are saying, you just say it, because you are so used to say it. Most of us aren't even aware of most of what we say. So go ahead and translate as much as you feel like. You will stop it when you are ready.

Anyway, I find SOME basic vocabulary VERY HELPFUL in learning languages, which, of course, happens in context, by using it. By memorizing words you are collecting bricks, not building houses, but you can't build houses without the bricks.

As you see they give sample sentences where the word is being used... and as so many people are talking about "don't learn words, learn sentences", I'm going to try that this time. It shouldn't take that much longer to learn sentences instead of words.
But I suspect it makes my understanding of the language worse, or slower, but, whatever. We'll get there, sooner or later.

So - putting words on flashcards and memorizing them... not going to happen. Putting sentences on flashcards and memorizing them instead. And, yes, with translation.

Finding a radio station: Russian radio stations streaming
I think Russian Hit is a good choice. Good contemporary pop music and ads and a lot of Russian.

How to learn a language in 10 days

Yes, it is quite possible to learn a language in 10 days.

This is the short of it because if you want to learn a language in 10 days, you probably don't want to "waste time" by reading a lot of text. :-D

Day 1: you learn the alphabet PERFECT PRONUNCIATION LIKE A NATIVE, you learn the numbers - ALL OF THEM, WITH PERFECT PRONUNCIATION, you learn a handful of useful phrases.
You use them wherever you can.

Day 2: you learn the 1000 most frequent words, PERFECT PRONUNCIATION, ALL INFLICTIONS AND COMMON DERIVATES.
You use them as much as you can. Name everything around you. Talk to yourself. Try to create as many sentences as you can with the words you have.

Day 3: you learn the 2000 next common words, PERFECT PRONUNCIATION, ALL INFLICTIONS AND COMMON DERIVATES.
You use them as much as you can. Name everything around you. Talk to yourself. Try to create as many sentences as you can with the words you have.

Day 4-10: You will read, write, listen and speak the language. The more you do this, the better chances you have to actually succeed in learning the language. Verify your output and understanding.

To improve your chances to succeed, find someone (or preferably more than one) who is a native speaker of the language and talk with them.

Now comes the long of it.

You just need to put in a LOT of work. Don’t expect to be able to do anything, but study and use the language. Everything you need to do, like eat and sleep, should happen in the target language.
If you want to learn a language in 10 days, you HAVE to put in at least 10 hours of work every day.
And I mean WORK. Intentional, focused, active, and determined. Now, a human being cannot do this for longer than 10-15 minutes at a time, if even that, so when you notice your focus starting to wander, take a pause, stretch a bit, and get back to work. 

Also, you shouldn’t expect to learn it well or to be very fluent. It takes generally about 500 hours to learn a language, and there are only 240 hours in 10 days, even if you could study 24/7 for 10 days.
What you should expect is to get to a 5 year old child's level of language. And that is knowing the language. Might not know it well, might not be able to have advanced discussions with people, might not be able to pass tests, but you will know the language and be able to express yourself in it.

Remember to sleep at least 8 hours every night, remember to drink a lot of water, and eat little but sensibly. No sweets and junk food.
See yourself as a race car - you wouldn't put in the tank any crap, and expect the car to function optimally, would you? Then you should treat your body as the tool and instrument it is, and give yourself the best circumstances.
And take a walk in fresh air every hour or so. At least once a day.

Day 0

You need to take this seriously. Which means that you need a word frequency list for YOU. You don't want to learn words and sentences that are important to someone else. You want to be able to say what YOU want to say.
To do this, you need to collect the words that are important to you. So... how to do this?

Write a list of things you want to be able to say. (In any language)
Write a list of things you actually say most days.
Write down things you do most days - describe your day. "I get up, I brush my teeth, I feed the cats..."
If you are active on some social media, copy your latest posts and add them to the list.
List all the items in your home and what they are used for or what you do with or to them. Like "door, I open, close, and lock it. Wall. It's needed to keep up the ceiling and to hang things on. Floor. I walk on it and I put furniture on it. Ceiling. It's there to keep the rain away and to hang lamps on. Bookshelf. Book. DVDs. Television. Armchair. Wardrobe. Clothes. Shirt, skirt, dress, pants, underwear... Fridge. Tomatoes, milk, coffee, tea, cup, saucer, plates, spoon, fork... You get the idea. Yes, every damn thing in your home. (Don't you wish you were a minimalist now and only owned 100 items? :-D No, I'm just talking about myself. I am a maximalist, I like things, and I have the weirdest, oddest things in my home I don't know the names of even in Finnish. And then I have the most specialized things for arts and crafts and baking. I mean... "serrated knife" isn't something most people use every day.

You will need 3000 words, and to get that, you will need to generate some 12.000 words of text. It's about 25 pages.

Now, this isn't all that serious. It is OK to use any word frequency list to fill up your list. I would not ignore this step, though, because you need to learn a language YOU can USE. Most people use only 2,500-3,500 different words in their everyday speech.

Now, if you can't possibly gather a personal word list of 3000 words, it's OK to take just any word frequency list and fill up the list.

Take this list and separate the words. You can use this tool: Word Frequency Counter. It can handle 3000-word texts. I don't know its limits. Maybe it can handle 12.000 words as well.
Then you need to reduce the list to reasonable lexemes. The word frequency counter counts "know", "knowledge", "known" and "knew" as different words. I count those as variants of one word. You do as you think is wise.
Like I - me - my - mine - myself are one word. For me to be able to say I know the word "I", I have to be able to inflect it and know that the different inflected forms are just "I" looking different.

Or you translate all these sentences, express the idea you want to express, in the language you want to learn, and do the frequency list with that. This is a bit more difficult, I would use my mother tongue (or the language I use most often) to do the list and just ignore the "you shouldn't TRANSLATE!!!". Come on! You are always translating, whether it is ideas, images, words, or thoughts. Most people don't think in full sentences of any language, but they most certainly have to express themselves in somewhat full sentences to be understood.

Day 1

1. Learn the alphabet of the language. Do it the “old school” “A, B, C, D…” style. Record your pronunciation and polish it until there are no big differences. A written language has most of the phonemes of it in the alphabet. This shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.
2. Learn the “Useful phrases” on Omniglot (or some other phrase list, if your language doesn't have Omniglot phrases). This, too, shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours, topmost.
3. Learn the numbers, 0–100, and 1000, 10.000, 100.000 and 1.000.000

This will do for the first day. On the evening of the first day, you should be able to know all this, be able to say it and be understood, understand it when said to you, and understand when you read it and write it. If you can’t do all four, study more until you can.

It is important to get the pronunciation right! Most words are pronounced as they are written BUT IN THE LANGUAGE. The French words are pronounced as they are written IN FRENCH. So even if you are just reading quietly in your mind, you should mind your pronunciation. Even if you never plan to speak the language with anyone. Learn the correct pronunciation when you learn a word. Take "horse", "hoarse" and "whores". There is a subtle difference there in the pronunciation. Most Finns cannot hear nor produce the difference. Or "they're, their, there".
To get it right, listen to Idahosa Ness. There are plenty of videos online where he presents his method. LISTEN to what he says and LISTEN to yourself when you place your tongue in different places in your mouth. It might take some time to learn to intentionally and consciously use your mouth, but it is invaluable when learning languages! And I am a language learner who studies languages to be able to READ.

Days 2–3. 

Learn the 3000 most frequently used words of your language by heart. It shouldn’t take more than 2 days. Yes, this is totally mechanical, cramming your head, rote learning, parroting.

Just remember, you have to be able to pronounce the words understandably, know them when you hear them, understand them when you read them, and be able to write them. 

You should learn the nouns in singular and plural, and know how to express the word in definite and indefinite form if your language has those. (And, frankly, you should be able to conjugate it in all cases, if your language has noun cases. Sorry, but they are pretty simple forms, and in reality, you just need to learn the exceptions, and the rest is logical, self-evident, and obvious - when you know the rule.
And you really should know the rule. I can promise you that when you have learned, let’s say “kissa, kissat, kissan, kissojen, kissan, kissat, kissaa, kissoja, kissana, kissoina, kissaksi, kissoiksi, kissassa, kissoissa, kissasta, kissoista, kissaan, kissoihin, kissalla, kissoilla, kissalta, kissoilta, kissalle, kissoille, kissoitta, kissoin, kissoineen”, “koira, koirat, koiran, koirien, koiran, koirat, koiraa, koiria, koirana, koirina, koiraksi, koiriksi, koirassa, omg will this crap never end”, you will very quickly learn the basic rule of cases in Finnish, and learn to see the case suffixes as postpositions.)

You should be able to know the comparative forms of every adjective

You should be able to conjugate the verbs in present AND simple past tense, in all persons. (that is; “I know, you know, he, she, it knows, we know, you know, they know - I knew, you knew, he, she, it knew, we knew, you knew, they knew”)

2 days.

Days 4–10

Play with your new toys, and see how many sentences you can form with them.
 If you don’t have a word for a sentence you want to make, find it out and learn it.

Write a diary with your new words. At least 10 sentences. It doesn’t need to be elaborated and advanced and fancy. “today I woke up at 9 a.m. It is rainy. I took a shower. I made myself a cup of coffee. I eat cereals with orange juice. I have a cat. Her name is Daisy. She is cute. I love her. It’s evening now. I watched the Aquaman. I don’t like it. I ate popcorn. Good night.” 
Publish it on iTalki notebooks or Lang8 or CorrectMyText and get it corrected. (MyLanguageExchange might be helpful too, I don't know much about that.)

3 Fun Ways to Do Some Mighty Fine Foreign Language Writing

Then go and read it up aloud on Lingora and get your pronunciation evaluated.

Now, you can try a voice recognition program, for example, https://www.speechtexter.com/ but it might not be that good. Siri comes to mind :-D But - it CAN give you SOME guidance in what you need to be more careful with. Also, it needs Google Chrome.

Read. At least 10 pages of a fiction book written for people over 10 EVERY DAY.
And not just mechanically read. Understand what you read. And don’t use a translator. Use a dictionary. Yes, I do expect you to find out every damned word and translate it so that you understand what the text says. You don’t need to create a good translation of the text, though, just to understand it.
The more you read, the less you need your dictionary and the more of the language you learn.
You will develop a sense of the language and get the grammar in your spine, and you will use good language just because your language sense won’t let you use bad grammar. This is why you should keep reading at least 10 pages ever after if you want to improve your newly acquired language and actually get fluent in it one day.

Listen to the radio (in the language you want to learn, of course) from the moment you wake up to when you go to bed.
Find a song you like in the language with audio (for example a video on YouTube), learn the lyrics, and sing a long. Doesn’t matter that you can’t sing. No-one cares.
One song every day. At least one song.
It’s OK if it’s a translation or “language B version” of a popular song in another language. That’s just great because then you know the melody.

Watch at least 2 episodes of a TV series or 1 movie in the language, without subtitles (or subtitles in the language you are studying), every day. Basically, this is just a listening and understanding exercise, but if you want to improve your chances of learning the language, you can do more.
Google uses movies and television to learn a language.
-fluent in 3 months of movies
-joy of languages - learn a language by watching tv
-fluentU - learning languages through movies
-I will Teach You Any Language - is watching movies really a good way to learn languages? (no, but he gives good tips at the end of the article)

- Duolingo discussion about using television to help learn languages 
- can you learn a new language by watching movies?
- mosalingua: how to learn a language with movies and series
- how films can help you teach a language
- the television trick to learn new languages

Talk with imaginary friends. Or enemies. Pretend to live in the world of your favorite book or TV show. Or videogame or whatever rocks your boat. If that doesn’t rock your boat, train for future situations you plan using your language in.

Describe everything you do, all the time. Preferably out loud, but quietly in your head, if you don’t want people to stare at you like you were an idiot. ("Now I’m brushing my teeth, now I’m making myself a cup of tea… I take the mug out of the cupboard, I fill the kettle with water, I put the teabag in the mug, I wait for the water to boil… here I am at the corner shop, I see oranges, I see bananas, I see I don’t know what that is, and I’m sure I don’t want to know, now I’m taking some tomatoes, one tomato, two tomatoes, three tomatoes…")
Write Post-its as a memory aid and put them all over your home. 

Write your shopping lists in the target language. Name all the things you see in the shop. Think about the discussion at the counter. Ask the cashier if they speak your language and if they do, ask them to serve you in that language.

Record yourself speaking and post it on YouTube. If you put a challenging title to it, like “I bet you can’t find anything to correct in my —-ish!”, I’m pretty sure at least someone will come and tell you what you are doing wrong :-D “Please, help me learn and correct my —-sh” will probably not work well.
You can just do the ordinary “add1” or some other challenge thing, these usually have prompts about what you can say, or just copy people. (Except that if you are a Russian guy, don’t say “I’m a middle-aged Finnish woman”. Or you could, of course, say that. As said, whatever rocks your boat.) You could repeat those phrases you learned on day 1, and the words you learned on days 2 and 3, numbers, your word play, or whatever. Or you could record those imaginary conversations. Or play the conversations from the book you just read or the TV series.

Now, if you aren’t really introverted and shy and all that, you have an even better chance to learn a language. Get yourself at least one tutor on Skype or something like that, and live chat with them for at least one hour every day. Preferably get more than just one person to do this with. The more you use the language, actively use the language, try to remember the words you have learned, and not just look them up in a dictionary, try to form sentences and express yourself, try to be understood and understand, the more you learn and the better you get. The invaluable benefit of this is that you have someone who is there specifically to correct your language and fix the errors and mistakes as they happen, so that you won’t go around days, perhaps even years, having learned wrong, someone who IS fluent in the language and who KNOWS how it is used.

It’s highly possible that someone, who lives where you live, speaks the language you are trying to learn. Find them and talk with them.

HelloTalk
iTalki
Speaky
Tandem

Learn a Language by Talking Online with These 5 Tools!


If you have a specific reason to learn the language, sit down and think up the specific words you need for that reason, specific sentences you might need to say or that would be good to say, and several possible responses. Find out how to say this, and learn it by heart.
Learn the specific vocabulary for the occasion. Replace some of the 3000 words (like words for banana, quarterback, and satellite) with words that will be more useful for you.

If you have access to some professionally created language courses, great! Use them. Divide the material with the time you have, for example, if there are 30 lessons in a course, and you have 10 days - 10 hours every day, you will need to go through and learn 3 lessons every day. Start and end the day with a lesson, and put the last in the middle of the day.

The following is not important for this challenge, but if you want to continue with the language, I recommend you start doing this on day 11.
People who study languages with the fluidity and "passing as a native speaker" aspect in mind have noticed, that you don't only need to SOUND like a native, you need to LOOK like a native as well. So find some material with a native speaker saying things in front of a camera and copy their facial expressions and movements, especially how their mouth moves, in front of a mirror - or camera - and train until you get it right. Look at documentaries and copy how people move, how they move their bodies when they speak, how they sit, how they interact, how they stand when they speak with other people, and copy that.  

Keeping a journal of your language studies

Keeping a journal about your language (study log, a notebook about the language you are studying or any other kind of journaling) is a good habit, I think.

Here's Arthaey's language bullet journal

Learning journal as a means to foster metacognition

Lexical Notebooks

How do I record all the new words I learn in another language?

Updated 8/8-20

So... this is internet, which means that what was there yesterday, isn't necessarily there today, and that is what happened with my links. I'm going to leave them here, anyway, to give credit, but - *sigh*

So, I'll just write down why I shared these links and what in there I found interesting.

Learning journal as a means to foster metacognition

"The journal is a collection of a student’s science-related learning experience, such as his/her proposed solutions to a problem, summary notes of lessons, science issues encountered in the media and daily life, results of an internet search for a self-study topic, home investigations and reflections."

"To motivate her students to take ownership of the journal, Miss Cheung encourages them to use their own language and preferred styles of presentation, so each learning journal is unique and personal."
 
"The student, Ching, used point form, drawings and a mind map to summarise her understanding of the mechanics in launching a rocket, and compared two types of fuels used by rockets. "

"They will record their thoughts about designing the experiment, what they have done, what was found, their discussion about the limitations of the design and their reflections in the journals. Most of all, the journal is not just a descriptive account of what the students did, but a platform for sharing their thinking processes: how and why they did what they did, and what they think about what they did."

"The investigation had motivated Chun to move beyond describing patterns in data. He searched for what scientists know about the phenomenon and learned about Hook’s Law (a senior form physics topic) by himself."

"A learning journal may also be called a learning log, a fieldwork diary or a personal development planner, taking any form like a notebook, a blog or even an audio record. The essence is, it gives a “live” picture of a student’s growing understanding of a subject experience and what he/she thinks about and responds to the experience. Being able to reflect, monitor and regulate one’s learning experience and thinking process is crucial to independent and life-long learning."

Lexical Notebooks



Some facts about learning vocabulary:
- learning vocabulary from a list is perfectly fine
- learning vocabulary from contextual clue (i.e. guessing its meaning) is awfully hard and requires that you know at least 95% of the surrounding vocabulary
- learning vocabulary through translation is worthwhile, though the simpler the vocabulary the better it is learnt with pictures
- learning vocabulary in thematic (green, frog, green beans, grass, trees) rather than semantic sets (green, red, blue, yellow) is more effective

Lexical notebook are about quality, not quantity.
- pick high interest words, not every word you encounter
- give a lot of high quality information about the word, like word used in sentences, information about collocations, colligation, related vocabulary, etc. Basically like a good Wiktionary page :-D ("high quality" means, don't add every little bit of information you can find, but add information that is relevant, interesting, good, useful, helpful etc. Quality over quantity!)
- don't fill up the notebook in chronological order, but thematic
- leave a LOT of white space for additional information, examples, etc. as you encounter it in the future
- it is a good idea to create a table of contents
- read your notebook often, so that you don't record the same thing over and over again. Learn what you write down.

A week of not being well

Long story short... ish. I have fibromyalgia. I'm pretty OK most of the time, but when something bad happens, I'm really ill. And it usually lasts really long.
Like for now, it's been a week.
I am really tired, I sleep at least 12 hours every day, and my body aches.
The worst is that I swell up, and that feels especially bad in my hands...
which means it's painful to write, both with a pen and with a keyboard.
Which means that for a week I haven't been able to write much.
And that is pretty important when studying languages.
For me that is, at least.

But... there's

and

They take really nice photos of language learning :-D

Anyway, my August goals were:

6 Weeks Challenge - study 8 hours every day
Super Challenge
Learn the 5000 most common French words, 100 words a day
Memrise French A1 - 15 minutes a day

I have managed to study 8 hours a day for 10 days. On 11th the FM bomb exploded, and I have managed to put in about 5 hours a day after that... and that was surprising to me. I thought it was less than that.

Super Challenge is "5000 pages read and 9000 minutes movies watched in 20 months"
That is 250 pages and 450 minutes every month.
I started 2 months late, so I have about 300 pages (278 to be exact :-D) and 500 minutes every month
I read 194 pages in July and so far in August I have read 244 pages.
Movie minutes are easily gathered, reading pages is not that easy.
It has been much of this lately, because that's about all I can do right now.

100 words a day stopped on 12th, because I can't type >:->
So so far I have learned 1900 most common words. I should be on 2200 today. I know I can catch up by learning 200 words a day, but I think I'll go easy on me and have a break, and start anew when I'm more OK.

That's also why my Memrise French A1 stopped. I'll pick it up when I am feeling better.

Leitner flashcard system

Huh! Didn't know about this either! Thank you, Lilly!

"Leitner schedule"
Tab 1: every day
Tab 2: every other day
Tab 3: every 4. day
Tab 4: once a week
Tab 5: once in two weeks
Tab 6: once a month
Tab 7: once in two months
You might want to use paperclips to mark the tabs.
Every day put a paperclip on tab 2 and 3. When you put on the #2 paperclip on tab 2, you go through it. When you put on the #4 paperclip on tab 3, you go through it.
You go through tab 4 the same day every week.
Put a date on the rest of the tabs.

Learning strategy 10: the Leitner card system

Here is the schedule if you feel more comfortable following one

also, this about writing flashcards

some things to think about:
- color code
- associate
- try to involve all senses
- try to invoke emotions

" handwriting is linked to tactile memory, which helps to solidify newly-acquired information into your long-term memory"
- how to remember words

My French routine

I am "retired", so I have all the time in the world. I'm "retired" because I'm sick, so I don't have all the stamina and energy in the world.
But, this is what I spend my time doing:

- reading, writing, listening, speaking, grammar, vocabulary

1) Memrise French class, to warm up :-D

I also have the prepositions in Memrise as flashcards and the 5000 most common words, which I am learning 100 a day, just to show off know that I can. Most of it is already familiar to me, I mean, they ARE the most commonly used, so I must have at least met them a couple of times, neh?

2) Extr@

3) Les Voyageurs - reading the forum posts and following the other members of the group

4) Now I want to get into doing some things they have been mentioning in the forum
- reading material on the net, articles, blogs etc.
- grammar lessons

5) Now the Super Challenge; reading books in French. I have a couple of different ways of doing this.

With Arsène Lupin I have the text and a recording of the same
I have Le Mystère de la chambre jaune in text and recording. (I had it also in English, and I read it in English first, but then I noticed that I don't bother understanding French at all that way, so now it's just monolingual.)
I have Le Petit Nicholas on Readlang, there's no audio
I have Jules Verne's Cinq semaines en ballon and Edgar Allan Poe's Histoires Extra-ordinaires as a book. 

6) Then it's Duolingo - working on getting the whole tree golden :-D
This is basically just getting it over and done with. Mainly because Duolingo is really petty in a wrong way.

7) Then Lingvist and MCD
(It says I know 2211 words. Huh.)
and after that some work with grammar - taking up questions of grammar from the presented sentences

8) verb work. It's not enough to know just the present tense and indicative of the verbs any more :-D
Verb a day
and some grammar exercises etc.

9) some other things, like
Mondly
Bliubliu 

10) I might be playing a little "Objets Cachés" games in Facebook. Add a bit of excitement when you are looking for things you don't have the slightest idea what that might be :-D

11) I post a sample sentence to be corrected at iTalki
and after it has been corrected, I go to Lingora and read it to get my pronunciation corrected.

     Right now it's so dang choppy and I need to THINK before uttering a sound!
     And it's really, really scary and I hate hearing my voice, because it sounds so childish and blah,
     but to be able to speak in French I have to speak in French :-D
     So I will continue.


12) First a little lyricstraining to get my ears adjusted to listening French
Then to voirfilms (to violate some copyright) and watch a movie from my movie list

13) And I end the day by logging in my Super Challenge and writing something on my blog at Language Learners

This is a very comfortable schedule, mostly play and fun all day long :-D
I might need to add some "hard core" language studies here...

Mimicking

Mimicking by Christopher G. Dugdale  ©1995

Shadow Talking, otherwise known as mimicking or echoing, means to continuously copy speech as you listen. It's easier if the delay is around one-half to one second. 
Delays of three, five or even ten seconds may be attempted in order to improve memory.

Mimicking helps to improve understanding, pronunciation, talking speed, clarity, concentration, timing, confidence, grammar and recall.

It can be difficult because your understanding actually decreases at first. It demands a high level of concentration and it's not easy, so it's hard to find the motivation to do it.

But - the inevitable dip in understanding is going to pass in a certain time, so the more you mimic, the faster you get over the dip.

Because it demands high concentration, don't do things that demand concentration when you do this. Don't operate heavy machinery, like cars :-D 

Practice with your native language to get comfortable with the technique.

Shadow talk as frequently as possible. The more you do it, the easier it gets. Do it every day, a couple of times a day, start with a couple of sentences and increase the time gradually to 15-20 minutes and then to an hour. And then to 10 hours. The more you do this, the better it benefits you.

Mimic the tv shows, videos, radio programs, songs and everything else. It's better to mimic natural speech, but it's OK to mimic anything. It is more important that you enjoy the material than that the material is "good". For example, someone mimicking songs learns slower than someone who mimics news anchors, but it's more fun to mimic songs, so it's more likely the person does it more and keeps doing it, which is better in the long run.

Do it silently if it's not OK to speak out loud.

Don't only mimic the sounds, mimic the facial expressions, the mouth movements, the posture

Note that people change the way they speak all the time. There are changes in speed, intonation, pronunciation etc.

"When you first start out, it's tough to continue and an hour seems like forever. If you can manage that then you'll have noticed that your mimicking is rarely accurate for more than a few seconds at a time. You'll also miss words, phrases and sentences with astonishing and perhaps frustrating regularity. That is the first challenge, to be able to shadow continuously without lapses in concentration. The accuracy of what you say, how closely it matches the original, is less of a problem than making some sound (or vocal tract movement if you're doing it silently) of each and every thing you hear. Keep at it until there's not too many concentration lapses. If the source says "I am going shopping" and you come out with "M zum ng chupi" that's no problem! You are not trying to visualize the words or 'catch the meaning,' you're just trying to make a rough copy of the vocal tract movements of the speaker without stopping. Your first target then is to mimic everything, no matter how badly, as soon as you can."

Research before committing

There is this language learning community. I won't say what it is, for two reasons. I don't want to give it publicity, because I'm really disappointed, and I don't want to give it bad publicity, because I might be wrong.

They sell it well, very well.
I love languages, I love learning, I want to learn accountability, tenacity, commitment, how to stick to something... so it sounded just like something I want to be part of.
But - between the selling pitch and final goal there is no information. I know nothing much.
Apparently I'm on a mailing list and a waiting list.

Now I have learned some other details, that would have been important for me to know.

They just started a new session.
Maybe I need to wait for the session to end to know more about this. Or not.

It's like the White Dinner in Stockholm. It never happened and the people didn't even have the decency to inform people about that. We found out by them asking for someone to arrange it for the next year. People were asking questions, and there was no-one to answer them. There was activity, though, so someone came in and posted, but ignored all the people in there.
I think that's unacceptable, especially considering that OUR rules are very strict. If you get invited to the dinner but doesn't show up - for any reason - you will be blacklisted. It doesn't matter if you were in a hospital that day, it doesn't matter that you were on a vacation and out of reach when they informed you about the date... I think the people arranging the dinner so far should get blacklisted.
But, I'm no longer interested, so I don't care.

The same with this thing. They should have some sort of event clock on the advertisement page, so that people have some sort of idea of the timeline. I need to fit it into my life, and I can't do that, when there's this secrecy about it. It wouldn't be revealing any pertinent information to reveal the dates.

It costs.
I didn't know that.
I have more important things to do with my money. Like making sure I have a working computer.
I am not rich. I don't have 1000 kronor to throw in things that look interesting, ESPECIALLY WHEN I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THEM.

So I'm out.

But... I have applied and I am a bit worried about the consequences.

So, how to get at least some of the benefits when you can't join this thing?

- go to Memrise, find a course (or create one) and set the time goal. This will help you be accountable.
- go to 750 words. Write at least 750 words in your chose language every day. They will track your activity, so this, too, will help you be accountable.
- I am still thinking about how to make ChoreWars your accountability partner as well

- join a language learning forum and make a log there where you share your thoughts and emotions. Put aside time, like 15 minutes at the end of each day, where you commit to writing your log. Find someone else's log and use it to keep yourself motivated. :-)

- start speaking language from day 1. Make a video of yourself speaking the language you want to learn to speak once a week. Make it public. This has several benefits. 1) you will try your best 2) you will train your ability to tolerate mockery and humiliation. (Not that that will happen, just that you are putting yourself out there, and it feels almost the same as if it wasn't a recording.) It will be just as horrible to open your mouth and speak the first word of a foreign language ever, but you are all alone, and WHEN you do it, there is NO-ONE to laugh at you. The possible mockery comes later, and YOU MIGHT JUST FIND OUT THAT IT DOESN'T COME AT ALL. Great! You have been afraid of something that just doesn't exist! I mean, of course it would be best if you talked with another person, but the step might be too big to take. Making a recording of you speaking a language is much easier.

- join the Language Super Challenge
- join the 6 weeks challenge
Both have bots recording the progress

Rekindling the fire

I just listened to a guy trying very hard to sell something. He spoke and spoke and spoke and painted one amazing picture after another, enticed and appealed, seduced and beguiled... it was so obvious it was ridiculous :-D
But... had I been thinking the way his target audience thought, I would have felt compelled to go and buy his merchandise.

So - what did he do? How could I use that to keep my inspiration and motivation burning?

1) Remind yourself of why you wanted to learn the language in the first place.

Imagine yourself walking in to a room full of people.

(Full of people! Yikes! Help! The introvert thinks. 
Oh, no, not this time. This room isn't that big. There is just enough people to challenge your discomfort in social situations, but not enough that you would panic. 
Picture the room being filled with the kind of people you most want to meet and interact with. Like... you died and are entering the heaven. Everyone you have ever wanted, desired, to discuss with is in the room. It doesn't matter if they are real people or fictional, living or dead, right now they are there, in flesh and very alive and well. 
And they are obviously enjoying themselves. Everyone is wearing comfortable clothes, all the sensory input is pleasant and pleasing, the mood is inviting and welcoming.)

As you enter the room, people notice you, and light up. YOU have arrived! Oh, the joy! You can see that you are the favorite person of everyone in the room. They have heard of you, they have followed your journey, they are dying to meet you, they want nothing more than talk with you and answer all your questions you might have.

(Ok, this is a dream. This is the best dream ever. I don't know how your best dream ever would be like, but work with me, OK? Change the details to match your idea of a perfect situation.)

They come to you, one after another, or in small groups, and speak with you. They all speak different languages. AND YOU KNOW THOSE LANGUAGES. You are discussing freely, comfortably, fluently. You are supremely confident about your ability to express your thoughts in all of those languages, and you understand easily everything said to you. You are standing there, relaxed, enjoying yourself, and discussing with these amazing people who look at you thinking you are amazing as well.

What language are people speaking? What do you want to discuss with them?
Write a couple of sentences you'd like to exchange and translate them to your target language.

It is highly unlikely for that kind of situation ever to arrive, but parts of it might. You might meet someone who is as close to the "real thing" as possible, and you need to be able to take advantage of the situation.
Why not practice speaking with people, practice some social exchange so that you won't just stand there star-struck and stare and be unable to get a word out of your mouth?
Why not practice the specific vocabulary needed for the transaction?

If speaking with people feels difficult, practice writing.
Read books about the subject written or translated into the target language. That is not scary.
Try to find a documentary about the subject in target language and watch it. Repeat the sentences after the narrator.

The thing is that I don't know
WHY YOU WANTED TO LEARN THE LANGUAGE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Think about that.
Think about all the things you want to do with the language and write your own dream-heaven-bliss scenario where you are using the language exactly as you have always wanted to.

Picture yourself diving into a new and fascinating literature written in the language... like Fantasy literature, you know. Every country has its own, and IT'S ALL DIFFERENT. Think about the national epics like Kalevala or Nibelungenlied. We are so used to the Anglo-Saxon fantasy, that we forget there are myths and legends and fairytales all over the world. EVERY HUMAN BEING LOVES STORIES and have been telling stories since the very beginning. Not all literature is written down, you know. :-D I am Finnish and I live in Sweden, and there are Fantasy novels written in Finnish and Swedish THAT HAS NOT BEEN TRANSLATED INTO ANY OTHER LANGUAGE and most likely will never be! And they are not bad! So - if you love Fantasy, remember that. There's tons of interesting books waiting for you!

That was, BTW, my biggest reason to learn Maltese. I wanted to read the Il-Fiddien trilogy.

❝If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head.
If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.❞
‒Nelson Mandela

2) Find some easy, quick and fun things to do.
Do this while you are still full of inspiration to be used to refuel your enthusiasm when it's going down.

Ok, so you don't feel like doing anything with the language today. It's OK. But... just do something little and easy. Go to Memrise and pick a course - or create one if there is none - and study 5-15 minutes. You don't need to concentrate much, you don't need to remember what you just did 5 minutes later. Just mindlessly click through the practice and that will do, Pig. That will do.
Go to YouTube and watch a video. If there are no funny videos (with talk, like Mythical Morning but in your target language), watch a music video. Extra points if you find the lyrics and read along the song. You could start a collection of music videos and lyrics and translations on your blog, to have an access to them all the time, so you don't need to go searching for them when you don't feel like it. Prepare yourself! (:-D)
Change your language settings in Facebook and go play some game there.

❝The limits of my language are the limits of my world.❞
‒Ludwig Wittgenstein

3) Divide your road to your goal into steps.
Like in the Super Challenge, you are to watch 100 movies and read 100 books (in 20 months)
That is 5 books and movies in a month.
That's about 1 book and 1 movie in a week. (there's about 88 weeks in 20 months, so it's a little bit more)
1 movie in a week is no problem. 1 book in a week... well, I'm a reader, so to me "1 book" is a mastodon, a bauta rock, of some 100.000 words and 400 pages. In the challenge "a book" is 50 pages. :-D

this is what 50 page book looks like :-D

So 20 months (from May to January) is 610 days. 

100 movies/tv series is 9000 minutes

100 books is 5000 pages

So to finish the challenge to a tee is to read 9 pages a day and watch 15 minutes of television a day.

Make that your daily step YOU COMMIT TO TAKE NO MATTER WHAT.

It takes me 18 minutes to read 9 pages in a language I'm familiar with, and 30 minutes in a language I'm learning - both with Latin letters, so that's easier. :-D Time yourself, if you want to, to know how much time in reality it will take. (Also, this is a great way of recording your progress - the more you read, the less time you will use reading the same amount of text.)

So - I can't imagine it to take more than half an hour to read 9 pages and 15 minutes to watch the show, so one only needs to invest less than one hour a day to succeed in the SUPER challenge!

Wouldn't it be worth it? ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU DON'T NEED TO UNDERSTAND WHAT IS BEING SAID OR WHAT YOU READ!

“A different language is a different vision of life.”
Federico Fellini

4) make it fun, enjoyable, likeable, something you would do anyway

 Which means that if you just change the language of the things you do every day just because you want to do them, and do them in the language you want to learn, it's more likely you keep learning, because you will be doing those things anyway. If you love to read, read books in L2. If you love to exercise, listen to podcasts, radio and foreign music while exercising. If you like going out with friends, get friends who speak the language, and use only that language while you are with them.

Also, the antonyms of "fun" are boring, tiring, unpleasant, unsatisfactory, monotone, stupid and uninteresting. 
So make sure you do nothing for more than 15 minutes, then have a pause when you do something totally different. 
Get a list of different ways of learning a language and vary your input. 
Don't do things you think are stupid or futile.  
Don't even touch grammar books if you think grammar is boring and incomprehensible. You will learn all the grammar you'll need by reading books. 
Don't use flashcards, if you think they are cumbersome, tedious and stupid. 
Don't speak with foreigners if you think that's uncomfortable and scary. 
(I mean, there are introverts and aspies among the  language learners, I'd say the majority of us are exactly that, and to us the social interaction is not rewarding, it's a punishment. We can wait with drilling in that when we feel comfortable with our level of fluency. I mean, most of us* probably wanted to learn a language because of the written information, because we wanted to read a book in original language, or it wasn't translated, or we wanted to read a website, or participate in a forum or something. Doesn't really matter, because the thing is; no matter what ANYONE says, your way of learning languages is OK, your reasons to learn a language are just as valid and good as anyone else's, and you don't ever need to speak a language, if you don't want to.)
Don't think you have to learn languages the way your grandfather, neighbor or that YouTube Polyglot do. It MIGHT work for you, it might not. Find your own way.

Learn what you find meaningful. It would be rather stupid for me to learn restaurant speak, because I hate restaurants and won't go even in my hometown if I can avoid it. For me, on the other hand, it was immensely interesting, fascinating and meaningful to learn what the different parts of "s'il vous plaît" mean and how the sentence was constructed. I also love parsing. :-D Grammar hag I am. :-D

5) Create positive associations around the language learning 

Humans are animals. We are quite simple in that way. So use this for your advantage.

Create a place of study. Make it a habit that you study always in the same spot. (or the main study always happens in that spot. Of course you need to remain flexible so that you could study anywhere, but creating habits, routines and structure helps you keep up with the studying.)

Make yourself a timetable. Every morning at 6 (or whichever time suits you best) you will be sitting by your desk and studying, come rain, come shine. You will do something for 15 minutes, then you will exercise a little, eat your breakfast and come back. 

Every time you sit by your desk, close your eyes, take a deep breath and relax. Remind yourself of why you are studying. Picture yourself doing the things you want to do. FEEL it. Feel how comfortable, confident, relaxed and happy you are, studying languages, using languages, mastering languages. Work actively to feel as comfortable, confident, relaxed and happy as you can.
Surround yourself with things that make you feel comfortable, confident, relaxed and happy.

Appeal to all your senses.  
(Or the five most commonly mentioned... after all, people have all kinds of senses :-D It might be hard to please your sense of balance, for example, though you need to feel balanced and stable when you study, so it might be worth it to think about the lesser mentioned senses as well... I mean, if you believe in leylines and ghosts, you might want to... I don't know, draw a pentagram on the floor or something? Light candles? Burn incense? What ever rocks your boat. It's YOUR boat, not mine, so my opinion on things is totally irrelevant to you :-D I'm not judging. :-))
You can put on comfortable "language learning" clothes. 
You can put on background music, if that helps you. Or cut out most of the surround noise. 
Get yourself something delicious to drink or snack while you study. 
You can use aromatherapy and give yourself nicely smelling surroundings to study in. 
Have a specific spot for your studies and arrange it in a way you find pleasing. Make it the most comfortable place in your home. Decorate it with things that inspire you and make you feel good every time you see them. Make it beautiful (now, I am a woman, so I may use that word, but you might be a man and find it silly - so make it a man cave. Make it a librarian's study. Decorate it with dictionaries and maps and flags. Make it... aesthetically pleasing to you. That is what "beautiful" means, :-D). 
Keep it tidy and clean. Just 15 minutes in the end of a day is enough for you to be able to come to a clean and tidy study, and that makes a difference, even if you don't believe me. Try it a month, and see which way you prefer.

Collect positive experiences around the language learning.
There is this thing called "negativity bias", which means that we need about 5 positive experiences to outweigh one negative experience - so if you have a negative experience, you need to erase it immediately by five positive ones.You do this by
a) doing something you know is nice, positive experience
b) doing something you have been avoiding because of fear, because it's highly likely you have been afraid for nothing, and doing something you have been fearing is an amazing confidence boost, even if it doesn't go all well.
c) find some resources and opportunities you haven't been aware of. Find a new, interesting book or blog. Go talk to someone at a language learning community. Doing something new is a positive experience, even for introverts.
Now, what could be positive experiences? It depends on you. So, start collecting positive experiences.

Associate language learning with your favorite places and activities and other favorites 

❝Language is the blood of the soul 
into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.❞
‒Oliver Wendell Holmes

6) make language learning part of your daily routine.

You remember the guy who taped Chinese letters in his mirror every evening and practiced them when he shaved. You remember the guys who put post-its on everything in their home and learned the words just because they were repeated so often. It's not a wonder the first things in Finnish the Swedes learn are "Perkele!" (swearing in Finnish, literally the devil, meaningwise more like Fuck!), and "Ei saa peittää!" (May not be covered, is written on every radiator on the ferry between Finland and Sweden frequented by Swedes). 
Make a habit of going to Memrise or ANKI and drill some words for 15 minutes when you wake up.
Put on the radio when you wake up and let it play all day in the background. (Yes, it is surprisingly effective - it makes you used to the sounds and melody of the language, and that makes it easier for you to reproduce it. Also, you might hear some words you recognize and the more you learn, the more you recognize, and le jour arrivera, when you don't even realize you are listening a foreign language radio station - because it's not foreign anymore...

❝Language is the road map of a culture. 
It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.❞
‒Rita Mae Brown

7) Put it on paper
Write a language journal. 
Get a new notebook.
Write down why you want to learn the language.
Write down how you imagine using the language in the future.
Write down other's inspiring journeys, success and victories. If you read a language blog and see something that makes you think "I want that" or "I wish I was like e". write that down in your journal.

Record what you did. Which tools you used, for how long, how you felt, before and afterward.
This will help you know which methods work for you and which don't, and if you found some difficulties and solved some problems, adapted the system to you. Write it down.

Find a way to measure your steps so that you can track your progress. There are some language and vocabulary tests online.
Memrise gives you also the percentage of the words you "knew" and keeps track of your time.

Write down those Moments, you know, the first dream you had in the language, the first time you saw something written or heard someone say something and you understood it.

You could also keep a record of such things as *how you slept *what is the mood of the day *energy levels *motivation level *other things done during the day
to find out if there is any correlation between these things and your learning, so that if there is, you can improve the other things to improve your language learning experience. 

You might also find a monthly fluctuation of motivation, and prepare some "candy" for the bland days you KNOW will come.

If you Skype or iTalki or have a teacher of any kind, you also need to note the questions you want to ask e.

Reflections on what you’ve learned today:
* impressions
* insights
* further questions
* interesting things
* notes on techniques, systems, methodology, new ways of doing things you tried out

❝Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.❞
‒Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

8) Do it together

You are not alone. You are not the only person on this planet studying a language or the language you are studying. Try to find that other person. Is there people among your friends who would be interested in studying the same language with you? You could drill each other, correct each other, help each other and reward yourself by traveling to a place where you can use the language together.

9) Reward yourself

Praise yourself for having studied yet another day.
Enjoy the feeling of understanding. Enjoy the benefits of what you have learned.
Reward yourself by giving yourself a new book, graphic novel, comic book, magazine, dvd or something like that.
Keep the rewards language orientated and remember that the primary reward is the language itself. 

10) Be nice to yourself. 

There are days when nothing can make you touch the language. It's OK. Take a day off. 
(But just a day. Every day off makes it exponentially harder to get back on saddle.)

❝To have another language is to possess a second soul.❞
‒Charlemagne

11) Remind yourself of that you are going to be OK, just you continue the journey

Remind yourself that it's OK to make mistakes. You are LEARNING, it's obvious you don't know the language fluently yet! And native speakers make mistakes as well... Remember that!
Remind yourself of that you are just a baby when it comes to speaking the language.You wouldn't expect a three months old baby to speak fluently anything, why would you expect that of yourself after having studied the language for three months. ("Yes, but Benny!" I'm sure you are much more advanced than a three months' baby yourself if you think about it. Aren't you?)
Remind yourself that you probably will always have an accent, simply because you are not a native speaker of the language, AND YOU SHOULDN'T BE, EITHER. It's OK to have an accent. Be Arnold and make it "your thing" :-D
Remind yourself of that it's OK to forget a word. Native speakers do that also.
Remind yourself that it's OK to be "dummy". You are not as "smart" as so-and-so or whatsit, So what? Neither is ANY OTHER OF THE BILLIONS OF PEOPLE ON THIS PLANET. It's OK!

 ❝Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can;
there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.❞
‒Sarah Caldwell

Remind yourself of that the worst thing that could happen if you mess the whole thing up is that some people laugh at you. Some might correct your errors, and that might feel embarrassing also. Some might laugh at you, BUT also try to help you become better.
Try to get over the feeling of being embarrassed. It doesn't kill you. It doesn't really even harm you. It's just a bit uncomfortable. BUT IT IS SOMETHING EVERY HUMAN BEING ON THIS PLANET HAS EXPERIENCED. It makes you just another human among others. It's not dangerous, it's not catastrophic, it's not the end of the world. Get over it. Really.
If you find it "un-over-gettable", train yourself to brush of the feeling as if it didn't exist. It is just a feeling, it really hasn't any purpose. All it does is stop you, hinder you, try to get you to give up. It really is all happening in your head. Laugh it off and continue as if nothing important happened, because nothing important happened! Take it as a good story to create companionship with new acquaintances, something to make you more human, more approachable, more identifiable. Learn from Jennifer Lawrence. She tells pretty humiliating and embarrassing stories about herself and it doesn't make her the least ridiculous or laughable.
And accept the help, even when it comes wrapped in humiliation.

* "most of us probably wanted to learn a language because of the written information" - the most vocal polyglots probably wanted to learn a language to be able to interact with others, and this is, of course, the best reason and most effective way to learn languages; interacting with others from the first second of language learning.But I assume 90% of polyglots are that in their own little world, not interacting with many people at all, knowing all their languages for themselves, never revealing their knowledge and riches to others.