Chapter 1  Things You Should Know Before Starting

Chapter 2  Pareto Principle and Core Vocabulary

Chapter 3  Build a Natural Language Acquiring Mechanism

Chapter 4 1st input - The Free Reading Technique

Chapter 5  2nd Input - The Sound-Mapping Technique

Chapter 6  Writing - a Great Tool

Chapter 7  Develop Youf speaking Skills

Chapter 8  Polish Your Pronunciation

Chapter 9  Viewing grammar from another aspect

Chapter 10 Other Techniques For You To Accelerate

CHAPTER ONE

Things you should know before starting 

“If you want to shine tomorrow, you need to sparkle today. ” - HUNG Q. PHAM

Speaking a new language is something a lot of people have always dreamed of. They want it for various reasons. For those who are living in my country Vietnam, being able to speak English well could dramatically change their career prospects. For kids bom in the us but having parents who can not speak English well, learning their mother tongue could bring the family closer. Some people leam a new language for their beloved, like my friend, Brian, who has fallen in love with a Vietnamese girl. Well, I am not here to talk about why we need to leam a new language, but how to do it. So why don‟t we just jump right into it? Every player has a watm-up session before entering a game. We are going to do the same. In die next section, we are going to talk about some common myths about learning a new language. You will see that although learning a foreign language is not an easy task, you absolutely can master it if you know how.

The Myths 

I am not born to learn a foreign language. 

Most people believe that to leam a new language requites talent of some kind. What we have usually heard from our parents is: “My son has a great talent in foreign language” or the reverse “My son is no good in foreign languages”. I hope you ate lucky enough to hear the first comment as it could give you huge confidence and boost your learning efforts. If you got the latter one, you might believe it and give up after youĩ very first attempt. A foreign language is also called a second language. Let me ask you a question: haven‟t you been successful with your first language? And if you were able to leam the first one, why can‟t you learn a second one? When you fkst learned youl* mother language, you lacked many tools. At two or thtee years of age, you had no dictionary, no reading/Wilting skills, not experience. Yet, you could master it. Now that you‟ve got a lot of tools around to assist you, why can‟t you just repeat that success? The bottom line is that your belief matters.

I am too old to learn a new language

This is one of the most common complaints I have been hearing from my students and friends. Many people, including scientists, believe that kids are better at learning a foreign language than adults. They also believe adults cannot absorb a new language anymore. It is true that kids seem to adapt more quickly with a new language environment. Many reports support that idea. However, you can also see that kids quickly get familiar with a new language but, after a short period of time, they tend to slow down to a normal learning rate. I first learned-French when I was only 11 years old and English when I was in my high school. English had been one of my majors for many years afterwai'd until I left university. It was still important when I started wofking. Several years after that, I still could not speak English well. However, when I got older (of course, everyone grows older than when he or she was in school), I achieved much more success in only a few months than what I‟d achieved in all the years before that. Steve Kaufmann is an American linguist; he can speak nine languages (by now, he may have learned a few mote). And he started learning his ninth language when he was 59 years old. It is not about how old you are; it is about how old you think you are.

I must go to the country where people speak the language I want to learn. 

I agtee that being in the country where people speak natively the language you want to leam would help you a lot. But it is not a must. I have been in the us foi- six months to leam English. I found that a lot of die “environment factors” I got there does exist in Vietnam, my Home country. I still remember my very first days in the US; a Vietnamese-American friend of mine told me: “You better watch television every day to improve your English listening skills”. That was an honest recommendation. But it shocked me because I came to the us hoping that this country could help me skyrocket my English skills, not to watch TV. If you are at home and want to improve your listening skills, why not just watch TV? In Chapter 10, I will tell you many other tactics to get a “native speaking environment” right in youf country.

Learning a new language is a long journey. It might take your whole life to learn one. 

If it takes your whole life to leam a new language, how many lives do you think Steve Kaufmann OÍ others who can speak four or five languages had? In fact, many people, including me, have been learning a new language for quite a long time but never focused on it. It is as if you want to build your muscles by lifting the 5kg-weights only three times a day. Results never come that way. When it comes to learning a foreign language, being focused is the key. If you focus in the right manner, you can achieve mastery in a short period of time.

I must have a good teacher 

Some people tend to delay things; I call them “delayers”. They keep looking for good teachers even though they have no idea what a good teacher looks like. I think every teacher has his ot her own strengths and weaknesses. The important thing is what you can learn from them, not what you cannot leam from them. Even a native speaker will have weaknesses in teaching their own language. For example, sometimes, a native speaker cannot understand clearly why a word is so easy fof her to pronounce but not for her students. You don‟t need a very good teacher, but you DO need a good process.

Only smart people can learn new languages 

It is true that when you meet someone who can speak one or more foreign languages, you feel that the person is smart. However, many studies show that it is learning a new language that boosts your IQ, which means learning a foreign language makes you smarter, not that you must be smart to learn a new language. This finding is quite interesting, isn‟t it? If you are still concerned about how smart you are, the following findings might excite you.Research shows that OUÍ brain contains around 30 billion cells.

Every time we absorb 01* analyze information, new connections aie formed among these braữi cells. These connections could disappear quickly or be retained for a long period of time depending upon how important the information is to you. It is not the number of cells that determine the level of your intelligence; it is the number connections that does. The number of connections increases as youi brain wofks and decreases when you stop thinking or remembering things. If you do math to count die connections possible, it is unimaginable; it is almost unlimited! Tony Buzan, a well-known human brain expert, estimated that an ordinary person uses only around 3% to 8% of his or her btain capability.

A person who is considered unintelligent could be using 2% of his or tier capability. While those smart persons could be using only 10% theit- brain potential. It means no matter how much youf IQ is at the moment, you are somewhere between 2% to 10%. If you are in a marathon, standing a few meters ahead of or behind the starting line does not make much of a difference, but your continuous effort does. There is much room for improvement. If this is true, your next question is going to be how to be mote intelligent? I used to think that our brain is like a computer hard disk, that if we squee2e too much information into it, some old information will be replaced by the new information coming in and be lost. I found that I was wrong.

The truth is that if you get more information, your ability to memorize increases accordingly. You then can memorize more and at a faster rate. On the contrary, if you think less, your ability to think will be undermined. Our brain has a mechanism similar to our muscles. If you regularly work out, yout muscles will become stronger, and conversely, if you don‟t exercise, your muscles will grow weaker. Research reveals an interesting finding that whenever we face a problem and we try to find a solution, new connections ate formed within ouf brain making us a little smarter. If we choose to stop thinking, we grow a little less intelligent. I have a neighbot who is a taxi dtiveiv He once told me that he did not like his job. When I asked him why not change to another job, he insisted that he was a dumper and that he could not manage to leam

anything new. One day, when we were enjoying a diink together at his home, waiting in front of the TV for the World Cup football match to start, he challenged me to play chess. Just so that you know, I am not a very bad chess player. I used to defeat my father and his friends when I was only 11 years old. Yet, I lost three matches continuously in just 15 minutes! When I was writing this section, my neighbor‟s image suddenly popped up in my mind, and I asked myself: how could a good chess player be a dumper! If sometimes you think you are not intelligent, think again!

Yes, you can learn a new language 

I heard an interesting story when I took a course with Brian Tiacy, a go-to person if you are seeking success. It was about Africa where there are a lot of elephants and mahouts. One day a gtoup of visitors came to see mahouts train their elephants. They were surprised to see the mahouts use quite thin topes to tie the elephants‟ legs onto a pole. It looked like the elephants could break off die tope at any time. When the visitors brought their question to a mahout working nearby, he explained: “An elephant is tied by this small robe when she is just bom. In die beginning, she tries aggressively to escape. But all of her efforts only result in painful marks on her leg; she is still too young to break die rope. Aftei a few days of attempting to break free, she finally gives up. Even when she has grown into an adult and is much larger in size, she never gives it another try again”. Any of us could ĩiave suffered a failure of some kind when we were young. A bad grade at school is just one example. These failures have an impact on ouf beliefs about OUÍ ability. They drive us to think that we cannot do certain things. Psychologists call it “self-limiting beliefs”. As the name suggests, whatever you think you cannot do, you cannot do it. However, it is not a truth; it is just a belief. The only tiling you need to do is to change it. Yes, I mean change youtr belief! So, is it difficult to leam a new language? I cannot answer it but I am sure that learning a new language is a skill, not an art. An art, such as painting, might require talent at some level, a (skiU does not.

Everyone can leam a skill. For example, if you‟ve never done pushups, chances are that you would not be able to do it more than ten. But if you practice regularly, within one month, you could manage to make it 50 — 70; some people can even make it a 100! However, imagine if I do not tell you this and if suddenly you see someone do 100 times push ups, you would think he must be special, wouldn‟t you? Many people who have heatd me speak English with an American accent have assumed that I must have been in the us for years. When I tell them I have studied there for six months, they think that I am quite special. They do not know that, not long ago, I had been very normal. Many people do not achieve success in learning a new language due to one reason: they do not know the secret circle of any project. The secret cữcle can be described in the following figure:

step 1: Start up

The "Secret Circle" of any project 

step 2: Face some obstacle or failure

Step 3: Make adjustment 

Face another obstacle

Step 4 Achieve a small success

Step 5: Achieve your target

As you can observe, most people assume there would be no failure or obstacle on theii journey. When they do face one (in Step 2), they get frustrated, thek initial enthusiasm and high energy quickly go down. Some people do go to Step 3 where they make some adjustment and try again, but they quit after facing another obstacle. Some others do go to Step 4 where they achieve success of some kind. But then, they simply get satisfied with what they have achieved and stop putting mote effort. Only those who go to die final step will achieve ứieiir target. This cứcle applies not just to studying language but to almost any field. If you get through all die steps, you can definitely learn any language. And you can learn it fast with the tools and techniques I am going to share with you in this book.

You need a big enough reason 

Sometimes, people are not very clear about why they need to learn the language they are aiming to. Maybe, you learn itbecause your friends or youi parents tell you to do so. Maybe, you just want to put one more language on your cv believing that it will make- some difference. Many expatriates work in another country and think that they should learn the local language. Whatever reason you have, a foreign language is something you cannot leam if you do not want it badly enough.

What I recommend you to do right now is to leave your book, have a cup of coffee somewhere and ask youiself: why do I need to leam this language? Think a bit fuithei- about what you want to get in the future. Think about your dreams, wishes and yom: plan. Where does die language stand in your plan? What does the language have to do with your dreams? Do you really need that language, and what benefits will you have if you master it?

Your brain is awesome, but it needs a good enough reason in order to perform a difficult task. If you want to quickly master the language you want to leam, stait with a dream. The moment you decide language is not something that can stop you from making your dieam come true, you have almost done half of the journey.