How people learn languages
There is no single right way to learn a language — there are a handful of distinct approaches, each with real advocates and real trade-offs. This is a plain-English map of the main methods: what each one claims, what a week of it actually looks like, and where its critics push back. Most successful learners end up combining several.
Learn by understanding
Absorb the language by taking in messages you can follow, and let the rules emerge.
Automatic Language Growth (ALG)
ALG · Crosstalk · the silent period method
Absorb a language by understanding only — no speaking, no studying — on the theory that analysing it damages your eventual fluency.
Advocated by J. Marvin Brown, David Long, Pablo Román
Comprehensible Input
Input Hypothesis · i+1
Acquire a language by understanding lots of messages slightly above your level, rather than by studying rules.
Advocated by Stephen Krashen, Pablo Román, Steve Kaufmann
Extensive Reading
ER · graded reading · reading for pleasure
Read a large volume of books that are easy for you, for pleasure and without a dictionary, until reading becomes automatic.
Advocated by Paul Nation, Rob Waring, Richard Day and Julian Bamford
Listening-Reading (L-R)
L-R · the L-R method · parallel text method
Listen to a long audiobook in the target language while reading a translation, then the original — L1 support instead of easy text.
Advocated by siomotteikiru
Mass Immersion (AJATT → MIA → Refold)
AJATT · All Japanese All The Time · Mass Immersion Approach · MIA · Refold
Fill your day with native material you enjoy and back it with flashcards mined from it — the AJATT, MIA and Refold lineage.
Advocated by Khatzumoto, Matt Colwell (Matt vs Japan), Refold
Narrow Listening
narrow input · narrow reading and listening
Listen to many different speakers on the same narrow topic, so the vocabulary keeps repeating and comprehension climbs fast.
Advocated by Stephen Krashen, Art Tsang
Learn by remembering
Build a store of words and phrases deliberately, and fight forgetting on purpose.
Sentence Mining
mining · i+1 sentences · 1T sentences · targeted sentence cards
Pull sentences you almost understand out of things you're already watching or reading, and turn each into one flashcard.
Advocated by Khatzumoto, Matt Colwell (Matt vs Japan), Migaku
Spaced Repetition
SRS · spaced repetition system · Anki method · Leitner system
Review each item just as you're about to forget it, so a fixed amount of study buys far more long-term retention.
Advocated by Piotr Woźniak, Damien Elmes, Gabriel Wyner
The Goldlist Method
Gold List · Lexical Inventory Distillation
Write vocabulary by hand in a notebook, wait at least two weeks, then keep only what you have forgotten — never drill.
Advocated by David James (Uncle Davey / Huliganov), Lýdia Machová
Learn by a system
Follow a designed sequence — grammar, drills and lessons in a planned order.
The Assimil Method
Intuitive assimilation · Sans Peine / With Ease · passive wave and active wave
A hundred short bilingual dialogues absorbed passively for months, then translated back into the language on a second pass.
Advocated by Alphonse Chérel, Assimil, Luca Lampariello
The Michel Thomas Method
Michel Thomas Method · Learn a language in hours, not years
Audio lessons where a teacher builds sentences with two students; no writing, no homework, nothing to memorise.
Advocated by Michel Thomas, Hodder & Stoughton
The Pimsleur Method
Graduated Interval Recall · Pimsleur Language Programs
Audio-only half-hour lessons that make you produce the language from memory at ever-widening intervals.
Advocated by Paul Pimsleur, Pimsleur Language Programs
The Thinking Method
Language Transfer · thinking slow
Audio lessons that lead you by question to work out the language yourself, starting from what your own language already gives you.
Advocated by Mihalis Eleftheriou
Learn by producing
Push yourself to speak and write early, using the gaps you hit to drive learning.
Bidirectional Translation
BDT · back-translation · double translation
Translate a short text out of the language, then days later translate your version back in and compare with the original.
Advocated by Luca Lampariello, Assimil, Roger Ascham
Shadowing
blind shadowing · walking shadowing
Speak along with recorded audio in real time, a beat behind the speaker, to train the sounds and rhythm of the language.
Advocated by Alexander Arguelles, Yo Hamada
Speak From Day One
Speaking from day one · Fluent in 3 Months approach
Start having real conversations immediately, with a tiny vocabulary and a high tolerance for making mistakes.
Advocated by Benny Lewis, Merrill Swain, Scott H. Young
Learn with people
Lean on a teacher, a class or a tutor to structure practice and give feedback.
The Communicative Approach
CLT · Communicative Language Teaching · Notional-functional syllabus
The mainstream classroom orthodoxy: treat language as something you do with people, and organise lessons around tasks rather than rules.
Advocated by Dell Hymes, Henry Widdowson, Jack C. Richards
The Grammar-Translation Method
The Prussian Method · Traditional method · GTM
Learn the rules and the paradigms, then translate sentences and texts in both directions. The school method your parents suffered.
Advocated by Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff, Guy Cook
TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling)
TPR Storytelling · Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling
A classroom method where the teacher builds an absurd story with the class, using only a few words, asked hundreds of times.
Advocated by Blaine Ray, Stephen Krashen, James Asher
Underneath all of them
These methods disagree about a language. They mostly agree about how memory works, because that part is not a matter of opinion — how to learn anything sets out what the evidence says about retrieval, spacing, sleep and attention, and which popular ideas about learning do not survive being tested.