Fluent fast: the role of strategy and tactics
In the previous post, I discussed the engineering triangle—the idea that there exists a fundamental trade-off between Quality, Speed, and Cost of a solution. From this perspective, every language learning approach can be classified into one of the following categories: it can be good and fast (but not easy), good and easy (but not fast), or fast and easy (but not good).
For every solution, the left-out component—if not dealt with appropriately—represents a major point of failure. The weakness of good and fast solutions is their cost: they involve serious time commitment, require discipline, and demand hard work. Now, you can always just “embrace the suck” and go the Jocko Willink mode for four months, until you’re done (i.e., fluent in your target language). But as someone who’d rather work smart, as opposed to just hard, I’d argue that there is always the best solution (as in: the most appropriate one, given the situation)—even among those that are good and fast.
It’s a matter of strategy and tactics.
Here’s the thing. There are many good and fast language learning approaches. In fact, there should be as many good/fast solutions as there are polyglots willing to put their experiences into an actionable plan for others to follow. All good and fast solutions have one thing in common—they’re demanding and difficult in one way or another. (It just so happens that becoming fluent fast requires spending a lot of time studying, using or otherwise interacting with the language in question.) If getting “good enough” in language X normally takes 600 hours, then if you want to get there in 4 months, you have to study for about 5 hours a day. Math is math. Your input—the time and effort you put into learning this language—is what does most of the job.
That said, every language learning approach relies on different strategies and tactics to achieve its objectives. Good and fast solutions are efficient (*). The role of strategy and tactics is to maximize the efficiency of the solution.
(*) Efficiency is the input/output ratio: a more efficient solution allows you to achieve the same or better results (↑Quality) in less time (↓Speed) and/or with less effort (↓Cost).
Tactics are what defines language “hacking”—they are a collection of tips and tricks that increase your learning rate. You can “hack” different components of language learning: vocabulary acquisition, listening and reading comprehension, speaking, and grammar. Accumulate enough small gains across different learning domains and you might be able to reduce the overall amount of input required to become fluent from 600 to, say, 500 hours.
However, tactics are useless without a strategy: you can use the most efficient spaced repetition algorithm out there to memorize vocabulary fast, but if you don’t know when to stop and what to do next you’re spinning on a hamster wheel. Strategy offers a vision: here’s what we’re trying to accomplish and here’s how we will go about it. The strategy makes it all work as a system.
Now, a good strategy will further increase learning efficiency by “stacking” gains achieved with different tactics. The best strategy, however, will offer a valid workaround for the left-out component, i.e., the (perceived) difficulty of a given good and fast solution. And here’s where it gets interesting: people differ in what we consider difficult.
Take speaking, for example. Speaking practice is an essential component of language learning, and speaking fluency is the ultimate objective of any good language learning solution. Now, you can approach this component directly—by starting to speak from day 1. Conversations you have in your early days months are obviously very basic and far from meaningful, while communication itself is often awkward and prone to major breakdowns—because you don’t understand what you hear. An alternative approach would be scaffolding it: here, you focus on developing other language abilities first (e.g., vocabulary, comprehension, grammar) by using completely different methods—before you engage in any kind of speaking. It will take you longer to start speaking, but once you do, you’ll end up having meaningful conversation almost immediately—because you understand the other party and have a large vocabulary base to draw from.
An extrovert with a high willingness to communicate will make for an excellent “speak from day 1” student. They will find the process enjoyable (talking with people! Yay!) and make quick progress. But any introvert will cringe at the mere thought of it. For an introvert, there’s nothing enjoyable about having a shallow conversation full of no-entiendos, especially when you can barely form a sentence. Being an introvert, I simply cannot use this strategy because both small talk and any public display of incompetence happen to fall under my definition of a nightmare. So instead of beating my head against the wall trying to use a strategy that doesn’t work for me, I leverage my strengths and get my foot in the door through, say, reading—an activity that I find an order of magnitude more enjoyable than speaking. I will use reading and listening as a tactic to get comfortable understanding the language, both spoken and written. Once that is done, I’ll start speaking and quickly get to the point where I can have an intellectual discussion on any topic—having successfully avoided the small talk stage.
The outcome is the same: fluent fast. The paths are entirely different.
The role of strategy is to design the path of least resistance. Every language learning solution works best under a certain combination of personal and situational factors. To choose the best language learning approach, you have to know your personal strengths and weaknesses and understand the specifics of your particular language learning scenario. Are you down to having (shallow) conversations from day one or would you rather build skills that will allow you to have meaningful conversations three months later? Do you read? Do you find it enjoyable? Does your target language use a writing system that is familiar to you? Can you easily learn it, if not? Are there other linguistic components that you need to be aware of, like tone? Are there many native speakers of this language around you? Are they willing to teach you or even simply talk to you? Do you have easy access to any interesting content in this language? What’s its quality? Are you capable of staying self-motivated or do you need external accountability? How’s your discipline doing? Your answers to these and many other questions determine the path you should take.
A good strategy will leverage your strengths and apply them against your weaknesses. Know thyself and you’ll find a solution that works best for you.
Written by Alina Kuimova | 03/09/2024