Learning Methods
A method is your core engine, the fundamental approach you build your learning around.
Consume vast amounts of content you can mostly understand. Videos, podcasts, stories all count. No translating, no grammar drills. The target level is always one step past where you are now, what Krashen called "i+1".
CI philosophy taken to its logical extreme. You restructure your life so your target language is always present. Change your phone and computer, replace English media, listen passively in the background, mine sentences into Anki.
Vocabulary acquisition is the single most important factor in language learning, and you acquire it through massive reading and listening in context. LingQ turns any content into interactive lessons where every unknown word becomes a clickable flashcard.
Audio-only lessons designed for commutes. Uses graduated interval recall (built-in SRS) with 30-minute structured sessions. Speaking production starts at lesson one. No reading, no writing.
Recorded classroom sessions that teach you the logic of the language, not just phrases. You learn to generate sentences rather than memorize them. Thomas banned note-taking and homework. He believed stress interferes with natural acquisition.
Mihalis Eleftheriou's "Thinking Method" works through question and reasoning. The teacher asks questions and waits for the learner to reason through answers. No notes, no writing things down. The course teaches linguistic leverage, rules that let you immediately recognize or generate hundreds of words.
Side-by-side bilingual dialogues, one per day, 20–30 minutes. The passive wave runs lessons 1 through 49, where you read, listen, and do light exercises. The active wave starts at lesson 50, where you go back to lesson 1 and reconstruct the target language from memory.
The most rigorous method available. Developed to bring State Department employees to professional working proficiency. Pattern drills repeated until grammar becomes reflexive. Explicitly anti-Krashen, with explicit instruction and error correction at the center.
Translate a text from target to native. Return 2–3 days later and translate it back without looking. Compare your reconstruction to the original. The gaps reveal what you can't yet produce. The point isn't what you don't know. It's what you know but can't use.
Teacher and students co-create absurd, memorable stories in the target language. The teacher asks comprehension questions and students contribute details. No explicit grammar instruction. Structures emerge from story repetition.
The philosophical opposite of AJATT. Start speaking immediately, use cognates and "hacks" to build confidence, and treat every interaction as a learning opportunity. Perfectionism is the biggest obstacle to language learning.
You speak to a partner in your native language; they speak to you in theirs. You both get comprehensible input without the performance anxiety of producing sentences you're not ready for.