Hacking Benny Lewis' Language Hacking Books

Benny Lewis of Fluent in 3 Months has teamed up with Teach Yourself and created the Language Hacking series of books for French, Italian, Spanish and German learners.

I always get myself a book when starting out in a language, and after looking over Benny’s beginner books, I recommend them if you’re starting out in any of these languages. They are well done and the information isn’t too daunting for beginner learners–a great introduction to the language.

You can even study the first 15 conversations in each language from the accompanying CD on LingQ!

[ldg]

I feel like I'm one of a very rare kind, in that I don't really ever have a desire to speak the languages I learn, I learn to become knowledgeable and enjoy the media and culture of that language on a much deeper level.

[elliott_jones]

When I first went to live in Taiwan, I focused on speaking entirely, and it was a terrible decision. I found that I could say everything I wanted to say, at a fairly high level, but when people spoke back to me, I understood only 10 to 20% of what was being said. The biggest issue was that people assumed I could understand them since my speaking was quite good, but in fact I had no idea. Since then I have realised that comprehension should always come first, and I am now focusing on it full time with my Chinese.

[thisguylearnsitalian]

“It’s only through making mistakes that we learn.” I love that quote. Thanks

[mothman]

There's nothing better than a good enemy...

[andymounthood]

Hi, Steve. I appreciate your balanced review, considering your vastly different approach to language learning from Benny's. In an effort to broaden my repertoire of language-learning techniques, I bought _Language Hacking German_ and am half-way through Unit 1, hiring an italki tutor for 30 minutes every week or two in order to practice the material in the book. I usually delay conversation practice until I can at least talk to myself in the target language and have a certain degree of listening comprehension skill, so this is very new for me. So far, I'm not disappointed: Benny definitely teaches and exemplifies language-learning techniques which most courses don't. I have no plans to switch to "speaking from day one" as my normal mode of language learning, but maybe I'll integrate a few of Benny's techniques in the future.

[HardcoreSalmon]

One point about the pronunciation guide, the pronunciation rules in Italian are easy. There are maybe 7 rules to learn and you are able to read every word. I can't imagine that a french or polish pronunciation guide would be as simple.

[ohwaititsbait]

Something about Benny really rubs me the wrong way. I think it's because he is part of the "rosetta stone" ethos that claim you can learn a language with no effort. It just cheapens the whole concept for me.

[elizabethb]

Thanks for the feedback on Benny's Language Hacking books, Steve. I'm enjoying your youtube interviews with other polyglots as well. I just finished Language Hacking French. For my learning style, it gets a 5 star review! It's the first language book I ever finished because it kept my interest with challenging "missions". I'm currently working through Assimil French now and am grateful to have a basic understanding of French with the help of LHF, duolingo and my weekly italki.com teacher discussions before starting on Assimil. Thanks to your advice, I plan on incorporating more reading into my language learning journey.

[lalalalalala]

Did anyone else start busting up laughin when he said he's going to hack Benny's book? 😂

[FrankJFerendo]

I think it is a disservice to tell people they can be fluent or even close to it in 3 months. Maybe you can say a few things about yourself in bad pronunciation, but you will never understand a quarter of what is said back to you. And very bad idea to start talking before you even have developed your ear for the language.

[CrisOnTheInternet]

Thanks for the review. I like to speak right away just to be familiar with the phonetics, but nothing too complicated, just greetings and something like that. I don't care too much if I make mistakes, but it 's not like that for people who are learning their first foreign language, for some reason there are too much pressure to make it perfect. But then when they start to learn a second foreign language seems like they feel more relaxed, it's probably, I guess, due to the fact that we get used to make mistakes and don't make a big deal of that. But, certanly I agree that no one should be pushed to speak if it's uncomfortable for them.

[MapEffects]

I'm enjoying using LingQ and Benny's system together because I think they compliment each other well. In general, I agree with Steve's methods on the importance of interesting content and building vocabulary. But, there is also a point when you want to begin speaking in some basic conversations, and I think Benny handles that aspect well.

[mishapurser]

As someone who has bought Lews' Language Hacking German book, I'm glad to hear that you like these books.

[JulieStudies]

I think this is a really interesting and fun development for LingQ! I’ve just listened and read through the Language Hacking French lessons on LingQ this morning - and I love it! If only this was around back when I was only a beginner in French. I’m a beginner in German, so will definitely be purchasing the Hacking German one and working through it on LingQ when I get to it. For some languages I find Teach Yourself a bit overwhelming from scratch in the beginning, so tend to use their Get Started In courses at the start. Benny’s Language Hacking series makes it even more do-able and enjoyable, and a great compliment. I think Benny’s lessons on LingQ will be great preparation for newbies in lieu of LingQ’s Mini-stories series.

[modelstatue]

Hi Steve, so after you accumulate all of these LingQed phrases and words, do you typically review them using your site's SRS system? Like, how do you usually move these to active memory? I find that my main issue with language learning is that I have A LOT of passive information, but I do not have much active, so I cannot really function when I try to speak the language since I cannot really reproduce what I know passively.

[Linck]

when you mouse over the thumbnail of your video, the gif loop is just perfect...

[Dm]

Do you recomend any book for learning english?

[ManForToday]

I know I feel as if I want to speak right away, in any sense, but it's a habit I struggle to avoid, it feels as if you're 'active' literally. But I know it's not necessary. But why students insist on needing to speak (for no immediate functional purpose e.g. holiday, business meeting etc) when students universally consider speaking to be the most anxiety inducing aspect of language learning.

You can't speak what you don't understand (physically, you can, but you can't meaningfully produce language, otherwise it's like reciting poetry or song lyrics you don't understand). You can only produce what you do understand, which requires lots of input, not practice. As Krashen says, speaking isn't practice insofar as we're talking about acquiring the language.

[keithprice]

I just don't know how you can speak if you don't have a good vocabulary in a language. What can you say and what can you respond to after a week with a language? I've been reading and listening to Spanish for about two years now on a daily basis and I am only just feeling confident when interacting with people. I tried speaking a few weeks after a started studying and it was horrible, I understood nothing and couldn't say anything.
Maybe Benny's system is better for real extroverts. I'm an introvert and speaking from day 1 just doesn't work for me.

[spacedew]

Sorry for being off topic, can you give a few recommendations to Japanese content I can import to lingQ? I found a news channel that sometimes has videos with close transcripts, but I want to have a lot of material available. (I almost completely understand weather videos, and understand almost nothing from videos about politics)