Review: Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It

Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It by Gabriel Wyner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An excellent book, and the best I've encountered thus far for learning a new language. 

His main three points:

1. Work on your pronunciation first.

2. Don’t translate.

3. Use spaced repetition.

Some of my (quick) notes:

- Find a good grammar book. Don't go through it in order, but keep it for practice.

- Spaced repetition  - use Anki, with images and (possibly) recordings

- Minimal pairs (this was superb. I know in Chinese there are plenty of sounds I just couldn't notice the difference between, while native speakers found them obvious. Using minimal pairs at the outset would have been extremely useful to me). 

- Forvo.com and Rhinospike are great websites. Check them out.

- Apparently children will ALWAYS learn "Mommy working" before "Mommy works". Interesting.

I can't say I agreed with his emphasis on the IPA. This is pretty darn difficult to learn, especially if you're just starting out, and seems like it would just add to the complications. 

Also, while there is a lot of emphasis on how to deal with languages that have masculine/feminine/neutral etc. (and some great methods for doing so), it was lacking quite a bit for languages like Chinese and Japanese, using characters. And some of his advice ("use pinyin in this scenario") seems a tad simplistic. Actually, I'd love for him to tackle Chinese, and then see what methods he develops for dealing with it (the tones, the characters, measure words, etc.)

And finally, toward the end his Spaced Repetition card recommendations got way too complicated for me. Probably because I'm not dealing with any elementary-level languages right now. But regardless, it seems like a lot of extra work. Still, if it's fun, all the better...

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Review: The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence

The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence by Josh Waitzkin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is like a self-help book in the sense that a biography can be a business book by teaching you business lessons. He talks about his experiences and then extrapolates the lessons he learned from different incidences and accomplishments in his life. 

If you are looking for easily digestible to-do nuggets, like "don't check your email first thing" or "never go to bed angry", you won't find them here. His advice requires you to dig deep, but they seem quite worthwhile nonetheless. 

Some of my notes:

Children who are told they are smart, tend to go for results, thereby avoiding any challenge where they might fail, while children who are taught to put more effort, tend to apply more effort to greater and greater challenges (Entity theorists vs. incremental theorists)

He discusses repeating what you learn until it becomes automatic, and then adding to it, and repeating again, and adding again, etc. 

I liked his discussion about how to deal with distractions. Rather than trying to do away with them, increase them, so they don't bother you (he applies this to chess, but it probably translates to many other endeavors)

I also liked his talk about constraints being liberating. He broke his hand, and learned to compete with one hand, deflecting with one so as to attack with another, so that once it healed he almost saw it as an unfair advantage. I like this idea, that average people would see an injury as 6 weeks doing nothing, but professional athletes find ways to take advantage of it. Allow yourself not to be at peak performance, so that you can learn/try new things to improve.

Creating your own trigger: Identify a moment when, or activity wherein, you're in the zone. Find other habits/activities you enjoy. Engage in these in a set routine, then start activity where you're in the zone. Repeat several times. 

At this point, you should be able to engage in the set routine and you'll automatically be in the zone. 

While playing chess he would eat 5 almonds every 45 minutes for alertness. (or bananas/ protein bars, etc.)

Anger: 3 steps: flow with distraction, use distraction, recreate internally

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