Today we have a guest blog entry from a recent (and very coachable) student. She has become a reasonably expert user of our system in very short order. For the rest, I’ll let her explain in her own words (bold text for emphasis is mine).
I am learning French using the Total Fluency approach to language learning. I am already 25% of the way to reaching a B1 level from almost zero knowledge in just 40 days. I understand that to be a good rate of progress even if I were studying for hours each day. Fortunately, I have only needed to put in 10 minutes per day on average so far.
Hearing others speak a second language has always been something that impressed me, as my monolingual brain could never comprehend it. My GCSEs proved my lack of language learning ability, I achieved A*s in every other subject but only the equivalent of a C grade in Spanish. I wasn’t a bad student, I just wasn’t taught correctly. Every year I was let down again, by the language teaching of both public and private schools, the grammar sheets and vocab lists were overwhelming and just weren’t sticking.
The Total Fluency system has taught me that I need to slow down in order to speed up. The seemingly endless lists of words and different conjugations are deemed unnecessary and a little every day does wonders more than trying to cram twice a week, which was how I was taught throughout my years of school. To really learn a language, it has to be enjoyable. But there needs to be a balance, during exams I would try to get up to speed on apps such as DuoLingo, the “streaks” and leaderboards just distract from the fact that all I wanted to do was get some outside help and I never closed the app feeling satisfied, or that I had learnt anything.
Personalised learning is what was missing, something developed to tailor my language learning to my needs.
After starting to use Total Fluency it was shocking to realise how few words and phrases I could actually recall from over 6 years of language learning. I have always been the sort of person that is too stubborn to let something beat me, being told I can’t do something gives me a need to do it. For years I had struggled through hours of French and Spanish lessons each week at school, the C grade was a slap in the face that provided me with the drive to tackle language learning from a different angle. With Total Fluency after less than 2 months I’ve already accomplished more than a GCSE language student would complete in a year of learning. The efficiency of this course is genuinely inspiring. FC – Bahamas
FC is giving you the chance to see just how powerful this approach to language learning can be. We should catch up with FC on another occasion further into her programme. Meantime you might find it interesting to know that FC is presently on track to reach B1 in less than 180 days which puts her rate of progress ahead of those very expensive and time-consuming full-time language intensive courses.