Fluent Forever (Revised Edition): How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It

I loved this book! It’s clear, motivating, and full of practical strategies that make language learning feel achievable. I’ve been listening during my commute, and it’s the perfect companion — easy to follow yet packed with useful insights. I’m especially excited to explore the author’s online resources to put the techniques into practice. Highly recommend for anyone serious about learning (and remembering) a new language!

I've been dabbling in learning a second language for some time now, and always seem to lose steam. I had tried various text books, audio courses, and Anki decks that I found in Anki's database, but never made much progress. That's where Mr. Wyner's book came in. I was initially skeptical, but elected to risk the twelve bucks for a copy after I read a guest post by Wyner on Tim Ferriss' site. In short, it's worth every penny. Other reviews detail what the book is made up of, so for brevity I won't include a detailed list. This book's value, in my opinion, lies in the breadth of techniques Wyner offers the reader. I'm familiar with immersion programs like Middlebury, websites like iTalki, and mnemonic devices, including the PAO system used by memory athletes. However, awareness of such things has only come after years of slogging around on the net, reading books here and there, and talking with professors at my college. Wyner's book would have shaved years off of my own journey into languages, and he includes many more resources I wasn't aware of that are worth the price of the book alone (and that's not even including the FREE resources he links to on his website). Where Wyner truly shines is his mastery of Anki's software. I have used Anki for some basic vocab stuff before, and had made some flashcards for classes before, but nothing nearly so in-depth as what he recommends. Wyner is truly an Anki-ninja, and clearly one of the beneficent ninjas, as he not only extolls its proper use, but also provides tutorials on how to maximize Anki so that one entry can become up to six flashcards, but also how to make web browsers to the mindless work for you. The icing on the cake is the emphasis on auditory and pronunciation training. By focusing on repeatedly testing minimal pairs (words that are *almost* the same that non-native speakers might not hear the difference between), Wyner asserts that we can indeed begin to hear the difference between speech sounds that we had been unable to distinguish before. He demonstrates how to make Anki cards for this sort of practice, but he's also in the process of creating "pronunciation trainers" that work within the Anki framework. I don't mind saying that I've pre-purchased the Russian trainer, which will hopefully be out soon. In closing, this book is a great asset for language learners of all sorts. The author wisely avoids getting bogged down in cases, tenses, declensions, etc, as each language has its own unique set of rules to learn. Instead, he brings to light a number of efficient and effective tools that help the learner to spend their time wisely. Having added about a hundred new words into my Russian vocabulary this week through efficient learning, I'm motivated to learn more.

I am a Board Certified Behavior Analyst who has thought about the topic of second language acquisition extensively, and I was eager to read Wyner’s book as a manual of practical wisdom about language learning. I was delighted by how some of his ideas lined up with ones of my own, but at the same time there are many missteps that I think hinder his readers. On the positive side, Wyner acknowledges that for vocabulary we often learn to translate words from our native language into the foreign one, whereas what we SHOULD be learning is how to seamlessly comment in the foreign language on something we see or feel, without the intermediary step of thinking it out in the native. This jells nicely with ABA research showing that speech-speech connections (intraverbals) are typically weaker than requests (mands) and labeling (tacts), both in terms of retention and in terms of generalization. Wyner is also spot-on to argue against the idea that accent should not be a focus of early learning; the behavior-analytic scientific literature has long shown that errorless learning—getting it right from day one—reduces the likelihood of continued errors after the skill has been mastered. Moreover, Wyner speaks of the importance of forcing oneself to communicate exclusively in the foreign language; having spent time in Dr. Edward Taub’s lab working on ways to test his “learned nonuse” theory of stroke aphasia, I deeply appreciated this insight. But on the negative side, Wyner is firmly entrenched in cognitive neuroscience. Now, while I AM the sort of behavior analyst who is open to ideas in cognitive psychology and neuroscience IF they have practical value (disclaimer: I’m a Relational Frame Theory guy), I also think the sword cuts both ways and cog-neuro guys need to stop ignoring behaviorist ideas and research. Take, for instance, Wyner’s constant refrain that massed grammar drills are ineffective and boring and that spaced repetition is the magic bullet for retaining content. On the contrary, there is a stream of ABA research that shows that massed trials result in superior initial acquisition compared to the interspersed trials Wyner recommends (Hendrickson, Rapp, & Ashbeck, 2014; Majdalany et al., 2014)—or, at the very least, that interspersal probably does not offer any advantage for maintenance (Volkert et al., 2008). There is an equally compelling stream of research that shows that basing a system of target mastery on a single trial—as Wyner’s spaced repetition systems do—typically results in an inaccurate estimate of the student’s skills (Cummings & Carr, 2009; Najdowski et al., 2009; Lerman et al., 2011). While I feel that spaced repetition and Leitner boxes are a valuable technology for consistently scheduling maintenance of previously mastered targets—one that I plan on incorporating into my therapy case load—there just isn’t the research to back it up as a system for *acquisition.* Yes, massed trials can be boring, and no, they don’t seem to offer many advantages in terms of retention; but making 30+ flash cards per day can also be boring, and massed practice is a useful tool for certain jobs. I also find fault with Wyner’s recommendations for memorizing grammar. In short, he advises the use of violent mnemonics and fill-in-the-blank flash cards. What Wyner does not seem to realize—because again, he’s thinking like a cog-neuro guy, not a behavior analyst—is that this introduces the same complications as learning language through translation: it gums up the process with extra steps (in Relational Frame Theory, we would call them “nodes”), and it relies on learning weaker intraverbal relations instead of tacts and mands. What he ought to have done is advise making flash cards that have images that must be described with *sentences.* Yes, mnemonics and fill-in-the-blanks can be useful as PROMPTS if you consistently fail at these full-sentence requests and labels. But to rely on them 100% of the time takes a process that should go like, “See bear riding a unicycle-->comment on bear’s actions,” and belabors it with a middleman, “See bear riding a unicycle-->imagine bear exploding-->comment on bear’s actions.” Along with this come over-simplifications of behavioral science. Wyner repeatedly says, for instance, that “neurons that fire together, wire together” and that the reason why some events are more memorable than others is because they have more associations in the brain. Well, not quite. It is more accurate to say that events that uniquely signal a context in which we can obtain things we find rewarding, wire together with the behavior required to obtain said reward. Events that are contextually irrelevant tend to be forgotten. And it does not really matter how many events are present. What matters is whether the events that *are* present signal a specific reward IN THAT SITUATION. Wyner drops the ball in that he never arrives at the principal of all language-learning principles: Language is contextually functional—language is only learnt if it creates rewarding effects in our current circumstances. Everything else follows from that, and no “layers” of memory or Chomskyan Language Acquisition Device or other theoretical claptrap is necessary. So overall, I give this book four stars. Three because it is highly readable, an additional fourth because it has lots of sound and practical advice and materials, and one lost star because its failure to grasp and apply the central insights of language as *behavior* costs readers what I feel is quite a lot in terms of efficiency.

Really great book, I love it, i learn a lot, I love to read books, and it's great because it teach how to learn new lenguajes

I am trying to learn Polish and I'm hoping to implement these strategies. Clearly written with a slight sense of humor. I have tried and struggled learning other languages in the past and I hope this method will help.

I normally do not review a book before I'm finished with it, but OH MY, this WORKS. this works FAST, EASY. I took 3 years of French & could not really speak/read/write etc. I took 3 years of French and would have still called myself a beginner. I'm currently on chapter 4, but with his method it was like I unlocked everything I'd learned years ago. In 2 days I was thinking in French (granted I already knew it I just never committed it to memory, I think because I was constantly "translating" everything straight back to English, which he says not to do). Luckily I have relatively good pronunciation, so I did not have to redo all that. So far, I love this book, & I will probably update when I am done with it or as I apply the techniques. I also really love that he links to free information and provides some free information on his website. I do not really understand why he does not recommend the See it & Say it in books or Berlitz Self-Teacher books. Those are hands-down my favorite books. Maybe they are not necessary (& I certainly know they are not available in every language :( ), but those keep me invested because I love using them, and they certainly help with my pronunciation & memorization. He mentions Berlitz in the book but says it is not optimal because it does not use the newest tech to help you memorize faster. I use a "good" grammar workbook & the Anki system as he recommends but card creation & workbooks get tedious & boring, I really have to limit my time with these so I can keep going in the long run. I do enjoy the audio parts of Anki, but I feel like it takes a lot of time to find & fill in all the information for card creation. Card reviews are not bad at all though. I suppose it would probably take longer to draw pictures on physical cards though.

This is an extraordinarily powerful method for building vocabulary, which is easily the most important part of learning a second language. I’ve been trying to teach myself German over the last six years with little success. (My wife was born in Germany, and we visit every other year). After 5 months of practice 2 or more hours a day with the methods described in this book, I consistently score at advanced levels (C1) on various online tests. The author provides detailed and clear instructions, including videos, on how to use the Anki flashcard software (which is an amazing product in its own right). Using images, sound and even emotion, he shows you how to learn vocabulary so that it truly “sticks.” He also shows how to learn basic grammar without memorizing rules, and his website has a forum where you can get more information from other users. Perhaps most importantly, his methods are moderately fun. At the same time, he does not over promise. He doesn’t claim you can attain mastery in a short time, and he encourages the additional use of other methods. (Sentence based methods have also helped me - Foreign Service recordings from the 60’s and Pimsleur). To make the most of the book, you should also buy the intro 650 word list and the pronunciation trainer - another $20 but still cheaper than most other methods. My only minor criticism is that, even with the Applescript he provides, making the learning cards takes me about 4-6 minutes a word instead of the 2-3 minutes he suggests. It may not sound like much, but by the time you have cards for 2000 words, that is a huge time difference (80 or so hours vs. 150 actual hours). Making the cards is more than 50% of the learning process, so this is by no means lost time, but I do wish I could make them faster. The key question in learning a second language is which method is most efficient. Any method will improve your skills with enough time invested. I can safely say I have tried 10-12 distinct techniques (Rosetta Stone, Memrise, Duo Lingo, Babel etc.), and nothing comes close to the progress I have made with Forever Fluent.

This book actually may rate five stars among highly left-brained people (mathematicians, professional organizers) but fewer than three for the right-brained among us (artists, dreamers, adventurers). While I hoped this book would help me build on an intermediary knowledge of German, it proved totally confusing, unhelpful, and annoying. Gabriel Wyner is a bright and engaging writer, so much so that I actually spent some serious time with this book. I even went so far as to buy the requisite index cards and dividers and place them into a shoebox, with the intention of following his instructions. These include reviewing key words and phrases from the language you hope to learn and re-reviewing the cards at specific intervals. It sounded ok initially, though obsessive-compulsive and a little bit like Weight Watchers. The thing is, there is no way I am ever going to follow such a regimented system, that includes seven levels of review and mastery spread out over 64-day cycles. It just isn’t going to work for someone (and I can’t be the only one) who doesn’t use an alarm clock and whose lifestyle is roughly classified as “spontaneous procrastination.” About halfway through this book, my eyes glazed over and my brain went numb. The author jumps from the science behind memory, to bits and pieces of a Spaced Repetition System, to pronunciation, then directs the reader to five appendices with two variations on frequency lists and many delightful drawings of the epiglottis and 11 possible locations of your tongue and lips. Back and forth, forth and back: I began to experience vertigo (not one of the 625 words we need to master). If you like to scrawl long logarithms on graduate-school blackboards, or create your own computer motherboard in the garage, or play postcard chess simultaneously with a dozen physicists, then you may find this a user-friendly guide for learning another language. As for me, I came dangerously close to carpal tunnel flipping back and forth between chapters and appendices, my Leitner (index card) box and my main language learning system. Yes, there is an online version of this as well, for those who find that 9 or 10 hours a day staring at a computer screen for work and personal use just isn’t enough. I would say, save your money on this book, and stick with a good language learning system from Fluenz, Berlitz, or Rosetta Stone (I like Fluenz, though it needs a printed book to supplement the CDs). Check out the research on how people remember things: regular reviews of your progress in learning a language should work just fine. Learning a language isn’t rocket science, but this book is.