Nice to see I finally have good idea :) Just to reiterate, I think it is important that each video is long: 5 to 10 minutes; and that it is thinking aloud; i.e. not consciously presenting to an imaginary audience.

Another thought is to have LingQers submit screen casts of themselves LingQing, and maybe you commenting on what you think was successful.

Listened to the video. Great stuff. Maybe this sounds weird (and maybe you have done this already), but I would suggest doing a series of 10 minute screen casts of you using LingQ while thinking aloud. Maybe edited to highlight key parts, but basically a peek into the process as it happens. You could do a series: approaching a new lesson, a second look at previously LingQed lesson, tackling an Advanced lesson as a beginner, flashcarding, tagging.

I thought the exchange with Keroro on the Forum was somehow the most compelling exposition I have seen so far of how you view studying languages. Maybe it was the spontaneous and friendly, competitive nature of it. I was going to comment on the Forum but obviously you saw something in it too. I haven't watched the video yet so maybe you address it, but I still don't get your rational for editing the phrase.

While I get his appeal, I would prefer to learn about how to make money from someone who has made a lot of money doing something other than teach people how to make money :)

While I get his appeal, I would prefer to learn about how to make money from someone who has made a lot of money doing something other than teach people how to make money :)

9 hours each way? That's a lot of listening. I guess there'll too much trash talk if you break out the iPAD between periods.

Speech isn't so free in Russia either: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110625/ap_on_re_eu/eu_europe_gay_pride

Sounds like a great time!

I think it is incorrect to draw conclusions about language learning from this experiment. Doing a single short term task is quite different than having a job or learning a language.

See WH Auden's Daydream College for Bards. http://wewhoareabouttodie.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/auden_wd_college_for_bards_from_the_poet__the_city.jpg See also Gregory Clark, not old, but surprisingly prescient of LingQ "So if you want to learn a foreign language properly you have to set about deliberately creating that sub-conscious computer. True, you also need what I call conscious input — the textbooks that will teach you the grammar, vocabulary etc. But that goes into a conscious ‘computer.’ Before it can be effective it has to be transferred into that sub-conscious , and constant listening practice, with speaking practice to follow, is the only way to do this. But once you have created that sub-conscious computer, you have something that even the most sophisticated IBM machine could not match. In my own case, as someone who has had to learn three difficult languages to fluency level — Chinese, Russian and Japanese — it is strange experience. Knowing a language is like remembering a song — a very long song, of course, and one subject to infinite variations. And each ‘song’ has its own little independent compartment in the brain, separate from the others That is how it is when we learn and remember songs. And once they enter that compartment, they say there, just as when we remember a song or, for that matter, just as when we learn how to ride a bicycle. As I say, the sub-conscious computer is an amazing machine. . People who try to learn languages consciously (and among Japanese and Anglo-saxons they are many) fail to realise this. They assume that there must be the same constant memory loss they they themselves suffer at the conscious ‘computer’ level. (The reason so many Japanese find it hard to speak and understand English is because they spend years at school relying on their textbooks to try to create a language computer in the conscious area of the brain, something impossible.) They assume too that when speaking there must be constant confusion between the various languages. In fact, confusion is rare. If I have to switch from Japanese to Chinese, for example — the process is not difficult. It is as if I just open a door, go through it, and close it behind me.. " http://www.gregoryclark.net/life/life4.html

What are you going to do about it Friedmann? Maybe you should quit your probably well paid job serving a corporation that contributes to the tax base of a country that flouts human rights,and join a grassroots "feed the world" non profit.

Did you notice a lot of overweight locals?

I prefer text.. low tech is best tech. And it is faster.

Although I agree with the premise, the phrase "surround yourself ... " sounds like a strawman. The story sounds at least partially made up to me.

You have the unavoidable responsibility to spend time with the language, even if you need to pay someone else to structure that time for you.

Igor 6 years! wow you must be a devoted listener.

(Steve) "I am of the view that successful employees soon figure out the dominant culture in the work place and adapt." I think this is begging the question; the question being: what makes a successful employee in the workplace relations, or what helps them "navigate it successfully. " In other words, how do people who are gifted enough to adapt to the dominant culture successfully on a sink-or-swim basis do it? Why should we want to ask that? Perhaps because it is expensive to provide a social safety net to otherwise competent people from foreign cultures who stress out on the job because they are too direct, too circumspect, have different privacy standards, etc and who are too dull to these aspects of dealing with people to figure it out on their own?

From the title I thought you had changed your mind on human caused climate change ... Great to see people thriving in the north.

bor. "If you think that speech therapy and accent/dialect coaching doesn't work under any circumstances for anybody" how do you get to that from ed "I am not surprised that there may be a correlation between those with overriding extrinsic motivation and success at "improving" their accent (although the sociological implications of that are not cool in my opinion)" ? and this is just the 4th or 5th obvious gaffe in reading comprehension. Not gaps caused by incredulity or middling clarity... just obvious stuff... I guess you'll say I am insulting you again bor. "Basically, you're just saying that you think the IPA isn't accurate, or isn't neutral, or is arbitrary in some fashion." right, but I choose not to explore this while trying to explain sentence level grammar and simple propositions to you... bye

"So does this apply to both natives and non-natives? Or just non-natives?" Both. "And thank you for shouting it" Oh why are you getting all snarky on me!! Boo hoo! IPA is a symbolic system that represents what is considered objective reality. It IS not sound, nor phonetics in and of itself. It was developed by humans who made decisions about this and that, some of which were, in my intuition, decidedly arbitrary. Those who use it as a lens through which to view phones are affected by this. In the end, this is really neither here nor there to me actually.

bor."Fine, but you didn't answer my question. If accent/dialect/speech training works for natives, why would it have no effect on non-natives? That doesn't make sense to me. I have met many people, and I'm sure you have as well, who are virtually incomprehensible because of their accent. I think these people would benefit from remedial speech training." my answer from previous post ed "I am not surprised that there may be a correlation between those with overriding extrinsic motivation and success at "improving" their accent (although the sociological implications of that are not cool in my opinion)" bor.:"Because it's not that difficult to figure out" So why do language teachers muck it up so much? bor.: "Nobody claims bias in labeling different wavelengths of solar radiation. From this length to that length, we call it X-rays, and so on." SEMANTICS= MEANING= HUMANS; HUMANS != INORGANIC MATTER

(Bortrun) ""Again with the fancy and attempting-to-be-insulting language. Did you figure it out?" Ah, ed, I'll miss you and your delightful insults when this thread is done. To the points! I finally ask you real question and you assign it the label "insult". Not surprised I did not claim I knew the devisers of the IPA were influenced by semantics, I just assume so.I intuitively do not think there is such a thing as real neutrality in this area. Or if there is it is on the neural level, not the voice mechanism. Unlike you, I do not claim to "know" that is or is not it neutral. I actually do not believe that there is any causal relationship between accent reduction courses and accent reduction. I am not surprised that there may be a correlation between those with overriding extrinsic motivation and success at "improving" their accent (although the sociological implications of that are not cool in my opinion) I am practically sure that any focus on segments or segmental based instruction is ineffective. There are many studies (Derwing and Munro 199? et al) that have suggested that. If you believe in the cause of accent reduction, how could you leave it up to the layperson to teach themselves "where their tongue goes"? And I'll not my videoing my mouth as I speak extemporaneously (!) any time soon, thanks.

"Present tense or past tense, the language of the developers of the IPA does not affect what constitutes a sound" And I know the price of tea in China. Repeating a claim /= discussion. I use "developers" in the most obvious sense, "founders, devisers". You might as well have ignored this one "The default position nowadays for most people is rounded." Does your link say that? "Did you try the little test I gave you? I'd be curious to hear the result." I do not like these types of tests because they always fall victim to the observer's paradox. For what it's worth, my lips moved more for 'room' and/ or didn't move much for either. 'What's the point of example words in a language you don't speak? They can just as easily be nonsense words." You map features of the sound onto words in your language that share that feature, then to some extent you fill in the blanks. Are you actually capable of ID-ing every possible croak, creak and breathy sigh immediately with an IPA symbol? No don't answer that, I wouldn't buy it anyway. "I do not agree with this at all. If people took a fraction of the money they spend on crap conversation lessons and got a proper accent coach, I think they'd be better off" I put crap conversation lessons and trained accent reduction in much the same category... the only difference being learners might learn something useful by accident in the former. "Again with the fancy and attempting-to-be-insulting language. Did you figure it out?

(your link)"a rounded variety found in Anglo-Saxon and even to this day in some dialects of English, where the orthographic key is r for the unrounded version and usually wr for the rounded version (these dialects will make a differentiation between right and write)." From your link it looks like it is not really universal to English. (bortrun)"No, the IPA does not contain example words in various languages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPA_chart_2005_png.svg Charts for individual languages may very well include example words from that language." OK whatever. THE IPA Chart doesn't but most learner charts do. (ed) "decisions on what constitutes a sound segment were probably somewhat dependent on semantic features of the language of the developers." (bortrun)"Decisions on what constitue a "sound" in the IPA are not determined by the language of its developers." I used the past tense. H-i-s-t-o-r-i-ca-l-l-y. What does "the (IPA) developers" in the present tense even mean? (Bortrun)"I never said anything about cost effectiveness with respect to a speech therapist. That is something for individuals and schools to consider." But you do know that for other than the most specific purposes, it is like hitting a mosquito with a sledgehammer (ed)"Feel free to ignore this. I am in the habit of choosing who I address based on more criteria than "hey they addressed me"." (Bortrun)"Do you then just address random people? I don't understand." Hey Bortrun "more" = " this stuff + other stuff" I leave you this clue to demystify this incredibly cryptic remark of mine.