5 of the Strangest Methods to Learn a Language

Just because they're weird doesn't mean they don't work

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Hey y’all! I was looking through my backlog of drafts I’ve written throughout the years and fell upon this piece I wrote a while back for a language company that closed since then. I’ve slightly edited it for clarity and updated bits of it but I thought it was an interesting one I’d share. I’ve got a few others I might drop later in this year after updating them too!

Let me know if you like this kind of content too!

After learning languages for 15 years, I’ve seen all sorts of methodologies to learn languages. Some are just obvious lies, such as “learning while sleeping” videos, and some are strange but still work.

I’m not saying any of those will be what you need. We all need to develop our own system, our own method. But if you’re lost and can’t seem to find something that works for you, these 5 methods might be worth a try.

The Glossika Method

Michael Campbell, founder of the Glossika method, is a polyglot who speaks more than a dozen languages. Many of the languages he studied don’t have many resources available (such as Taiwanese Hokkien, Welsh, or Manx) so he created his own method based on learning sentences to reach a conversational level.

His method relies on listening to sentences in English, then in the target language by a native speaker, and then repeating the sentence while mimicking the rhythm and intonation. As the learner studies varieties of similar sentences, they develop an understanding of the syntax, morphology, and phonology of the language.

Michael states that anybody could reach a conversational level after 3,000 sentences. While this hasn’t been proven by any study, his experience speaks for itself. His Mandarin Chinese sounds flawless and many of his other languages do too.

This method almost entirely relies on audio content and Michael doesn’t hide that it’s not for complete beginners nor that it helps with vocabulary. That’s why he recommends using it as a complement to vocabulary building.

If you’re curious about this, here’s a video explaining in detail how this practice can show why this method is effective in pronouncing words and forming sentences better.

My recommendation: Use it if you’re learning a language with few resources available. Otherwise, I think it’s too steep a price for what it is.

The Keyword Method

This method can be quite effective to pair with the Glossika method as it’s entirely about learning vocabulary. The concept is simple: to connect a vivid image of words you want to remember in order to make the connection stronger in your brain. That’s the goal of such mnemonics.

Let’s say you wanted to remember the word “vitesse” in French (which means “speed”), you could create an image of someone acing another person at tennis. You could then imagine how much vitality that person had to ace someone with such speed when playing Tennis.

The keyword method works well but takes time. Creating an image for every word you’d like to remember can easily become overwhelming. This is why you also need to use the words often so you lose the need to go through the image every time.

Another good way to make the connection stronger could be to use these mnemonics in combination with Spaced-Repetition Softwares (SRS) such as Anki, so that even if you can’t use the word soon, you still get to practice it.

My recommendation: Use it rarely and only for words or expressions you can’t seem to remember and keep looking up.

Bidirectional Translation

This is Luca Lampariello’s favorite method, one of the most famous polyglots in the world. Obviously, this might not be fun for everybody, but it could be for you. And that’s all that matters.

Some people say you should learn to speak without translating in your head. In the long run, that’s the goal. But avoiding it from the start may not be the best solution, according to Luca who uses it for his first 3 to 6 months.

His method relies on using fun bilingual books with content of progressive difficulty. This means the text should get harder as you keep reading. By comparing the two languages, you don’t need a dictionary and can infer partially some grammar patterns. You also get to remember everything better because it always appears in context.

The method follows three steps:

1. Understanding the text. This step is quite straightforward. It consists of reading the text in the target language and then its translation.

2. Translation into native language. This consists of looking at the target language and trying to recreate its translation. It makes it more personal. This is similar to reviewing the content.

3. Translation into target language. This final step is what activates the memory most. This is the step above reviewing, that Luca calls recalling. 

By using bidirectional translation with texts of progressive difficulty, you can create long-lasting connections. Words and expressions appear again and again, and you get to use them often in the third step.

The goal isn’t to become fluent in the language but to create a framework in the brain so that it gets easier to learn more later. That’s why Luca uses this only during the beginner stages.

My recommendation: Avoid it for your first language if you aren’t ready to face the struggle ahead. If you are, however, the mental effort surely helps to learn faster.

No Translation Approach

The most famous method using this technique is called Rosetta Stone. Its entire concept is pretty much the opposite of Luca’s approach: to learn a language without ever relying on translation.

This method connects images and situations to words and sentences in the language. That’s why this approach is similar to learning like a child learning his native language.

This method works. There’s no questioning this since we all learned our native language this way. However, it also has its flaws.

Children take more than a year to say their first words and make complete sentences by the age of 3. By that time, they’ve usually been exposed to about 13,140 hours of the language (if we consider they sleep 12 hours a day). To reach that amount of content would take a lot more than three years as a busy working adult.

This method also doesn’t use the pattern recognition skills we all develop with age. It’s easier to recognize the word “apple” when hearing “Apfel” is German, than to learn it from scratch again. It’s easier to know how to make sentences in Japanese when you get told the verb is always at the end instead of having to figure it out yourself.

While this method works, you have to be very patient to make it worth your time.

My recommendation: Avoid wasting your time. Get some exposure but don’t throw away the opportunity you have to use your experience as a human being.

Only-Reading Method

This method isn’t for everyone and definitely not to start at the very beginning. It requires a knowledge of the most frequent 1,000 words to even begin, which can be done using wordlists, if you can bear with them — which I can’t (and don’t recommend).

When that stage is done though, that’s when the fun can begin if you enjoy reading. According to research by Paul Nation, you would need to read about 94 novels to get enough “tokens” to know the 9,000 most common words in the language.

Nation advises increasing the number of known words by 1,000 a year, which means learning a language would take about 9 years. This can be quite long.

To counter that, one method can be to read books that are a level higher the one you’re trying to reach. While it’ll take more time to read them, these will use more varied vocabulary and help increase double-fold the knowledge you have.

My recommendation: Learning a language only through reading books is a daunting task I wouldn’t advise for non-bookworms. I tried it 10 years ago, before I developed a habit of reading, and it made me almost instantly stop learning the language (Italian). That’s also a pretty bad idea if your goal is to have conversations in the language. 

But if you love reading and literature is what interests you most in the language, why not giving it a go?

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These methods are all strange in how specific they are. They turn their focus to a single task and bet on efforts and time to do the rest.

They all work to some degree but aren’t for everybody. If you’ve been stagnating and feeling down, trying one could be the way to get out of your rut. But don’t hesitate to switch again when you get in another one.

Learning a language needs variety. It requires you to experience and have fun with the language. You need to find what you want to do and adapt regularly.

Your journey is yours.

Don’t let any single method kill your dream of fluency.