Barry Farber, How to Learn Any Language: Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably, and On Your Own

A Review

Copyright © Ruth Marshall 2005

This book is excellent, both in terms of the ideas Farber presents, and in his written style. I like his sense of humour, too!

The core of the programme is contained in the first half-dozen chapters, and the rest is largely motivation and expansion of some of the ideas presented earlier. Mr Farber has a “multi-track” approach to learning languages. He suggests using (a) a grammar textbook or workbook, (b) a newspaper or magazine article, or a short story in your target language, (c) a two-way dictionary, (d) home-made flash cards, (e) a tourists’ phrase book, (f) blank cassettes, movies in your chosen language, native speakers, etc.

The idea is that after you complete the first half-dozen lessons from the grammar book, you take the newspaper article and go through that, paragraph by paragraph, marking all unknown words. Then try to find those in a dictionary. Go on to the second paragraph and repeat the process. Continue working steadily through the grammar book; continue working through the newspaper article, and next add in the foreign language tapes for listening. Try to copy the intonation on the tapes. (This is where the blank tapes come in). Also start working through the phrase book, learning the everyday language, rather than the stilted form you are likely to find in your textbook. Flash cards are for practising vocabulary, and for recording any questions you may have about the language. When you find a native speaker, make sure you ask him or her about your problem words.

Barry Farber recommends a memory device which I think Powerglide used (and which we didn’t like there, any more than we do in Farber’s book). Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure the idea works well, but we are just not very keen on it. The idea is to make up silly words or phrases that remind you of the one you are trying to learn. One example he gives is for the Italian word for a chicken – pollo – pronounced “polo”: he suggests you imagine an Italian man telling you about an animal trainer who has recently staged the world’s first animal polo match, between teams of chickens. Personally, I think it would be more helpful if he tied it in with the French word poule, or the English “pullet”, but this is what he suggests.

We are adapting Farber’s ideas in our study of French. I think the multi-track idea is excellent, and so we are using a variety of resources: Skoldo French for the younger boys; a French Bible (both printed and audio, courtesy of the Internet) and daily texts from the Trinitarian Bible Society's Pensées Précieuses calendar; French grammar for the older ones, and Take Off in French – an audio language curriculum published by Oxford University Press. The older children will also be reading and translating articles from French newspapers. So far, this approach seems to be working very well indeed.

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