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In this very candid interview with polyglot Olly Richards, we’re getting a look behind the scenes into the workings of one of the hardest working, most effective and interesting language learners on the scene.
He’s the creator of the Teach Yourself short story books amongst many other accomplishments. These books have helped many language learners find intermediate and advanced reading material in a variety of languages that had been previously difficult to find.
Tune in now and you’ll learn:
* The difference between the desire to communicate and the desire to learn a language and how bringing these two distinct quests together can give your study efforts a boost.
* Why consuming a lot of information will not enable you to suddenly speak the language.
* Why even self-directed learners will need to use some of the same techniques used in traditional language-learning classrooms.
* How to escape the prison of blaming grammar for your language learning troubles and what to focus on instead.
* Why “context is king” in language learning.
* Why perfectionism is your worst enemy and how to overcome it.
* The relationships between learning languages and learning music.
* Why studying jazz enabled him to be able to hear the auditory elements of the languages he has learned at a deeper level and react quickly in his mind even at the early stages in order to create 
greater conversational flow (improvisational jazz, as my virtual bass teacher Scott Devine has described, is the art of correcting yourself as you go).
* How to know if the particular language aspects you’re studying have a “high surrender value” so that you’re spending your time in the right areas that will serve you the most over the short and long term.
* Exactly when (and why) Olly resorts to mnemonic devices instead of relying on spaced-repetition alone.
* The importance of knowing when to stop forcing a learning step and how to come back to it later with a more receptive mind.
* What Olly does to break the monotony of flash cards and get started using the new language he’s studying (this technique may surprise you!)
* The amazing benefits of incorporating Excel files into your language learning. Check out Olly’s amazing video about this below.
* An in-depth analysis of what the term “language hack” means and how best to use this concept to approach your language learning efforts.
* How to focus on your methods in order to focus better on the content of the language.
* The “language mediation” phenomenon in which people in your target language will make it easier for you to converse with them instead of launching into idioms and expressions that won’t make any sense (just one of many reasons why you should never fear just getting out there and speaking).
* Olly’s fascinating definition of “fluency” (one of the most powerful we’ve ever heard on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast in addition to what we’ve heard from Luca Lampariello and David Mansaray).
* Olly’s personal feelings about losing a particular level of fluency in a language, but why there is never any reason you can never go back and achieve even greater heights if you treat learning multiple languages as a revolving door.
* … and much, much more.
Further Resources
Olly’s “Remote Learning” Guest Post on Benny Lewis’ Fluent in 3 Months.
Olly’s I Will Teach You A Language YouTube Channel
Olly’s “Learn Kanji the Smart Way”
Olly on the Actual Fluency Podcast
YouTube documentary on Olly by Jan Van Deraa:
Olly’s video on using Excel as part of your language learning:
