Conquering Foreign Languages: An Uncommon Guide to Reaching Fluency in Any Language

By Tristan King

Conquering Foreign Languages is the result of over 15 years of learning languages. It explains techniques that helped the author become a speaker of four foreign tongues, transition from beginner to teacher in less than a year in one of them, and converse with locals in several countries around the globe.

In this uncommon guide from self-confessed language fanatic, writer and travel-addict Tristan King, you will learn:

- How you can make language learning part of your everyday lifestyle (without taking extra time out of your day)
- How Tristan transitioned from newbie Spanish learner to teacher in less than one year without visiting a Spanish-speaking country, and how you can too
- How to learn faster, retain more, and develop memorable cues to boost your vocabulary
- Creative, free methods and techniques to sky-rocket your confidence when speaking another language
- Bonus: Insider tips on getting discounts for language courses (this alone will likely save you more than double the price of the guide)

Who is this guide for? This guide will help you if:

- Learning a foreign language has always been on your 'to do list', but you haven't started because you thought it seemed to difficult, or you could never find the time
- You've started learning one, but aren't progressing as fast as you'd like
- You want to experience the real sense of exotic places and impress the locals, or your partner speaks another language

You don't need to slave for hours over boring textbooks: what you need is real, tested techniques that you can apply now and use every day. That's exactly what you'll find in this guide - so join Tristan as he uses all of these techniques himself while learning French (his 5th language), and discover how to build confidence by skyrocketing your fluency.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tristan King
• Release date: Jan 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465979315

Tristan King

I'm Tristan, a serial language fanatic, adventurer, teacher, student and writer. My biggest passions are travel and learning foreign languages. After studying Japanese in early high school and throughout university, I moved on to German after falling in love with German beer halls; Spanish after drawing inspiration from my Colombian wife; and French (what's not to love about French?). After making plenty of mistakes, practicing for thousands of hours and having experience living daily life in Japanese-, Spanish- and German-speaking countries, I turned to writing to help others learn languages, and encourage would-be multilinguals to take the plunge. I live in Melbourne, Australia, hold a Masters of Applied Linguistics from Macquarie University, and write about my passion for languages at http://languagemusings.com.

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Conquering Foreign Languages:

An Uncommon Guide to Reaching Fluency in Any Language

By Tristan King

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Official Copyright

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way expect as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permissible by copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Published by Tristan King

Copyright 2012

Smashwords Edition

Version 1.0, All right reserved.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Before We Get Started: A Letter From The Author (That’s Me, Tristan)

Who This Guide Is For, And Where It Can Take You

What This Guide Will Not Do

But Wait, Who Am I To Tell You All This? (In Case We Haven’t Met Yet)

A Fire Inside: My Inspiration For Rapid Learning

PART I.THE BEAUTY OF BEGINNING

Starting Out: Good Old-Fashioned Human Interaction

Choosing A Language School

Intensive, Or Non-Intensive?

Learning Verb Tables: Do I Haveeee To?

Light A Fire: Finding Your Inspiration

Embracing The Quirkiness Of Languages

Action Plan

PART II.MIND-BENDING: HOW TO SKYROCKET YOUR LANGUAGE SKILLS (AND OTHER INTERROGATIONS)

Super-Boosting Vocabulary (And How Robert De Niro Helped My Spanish)

Seek And You Shall Find: Interrogating Your Way To The Top

Searching For Opposites: A Fool-Proof Way To Elicit Words From Friends & Strangers

Using Downtime To Skyrocket Your Fluency

So, When Am I Going To Listen To All This?: Downtime Is Your Friend.

Beating The Kill Me Now Classroom Moment

Action Plan

PART III.TO BECOME FLUENT, SPEAK YOU MUST

The Best Strategy to Conquer Your Target Language

Creative, Free Methods To Make Learning Part Of Every Day

Finding Guinea Pigs: Practice Makes (Almost) Perfect

Action Plan

PART IV.PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

The Point Of No Return: When You Can Say You’re Conversationally Fluent

An Example Of How This Can Really Be Done

Now It’s Your Turn

BONUS MATERIALS, EXTRAS, AND CLOSING

Bonus: Tips For Getting Discounts On Language Courses

Extra Resources And An Invitation To Join Me

Superstars and rockers: Acknowledgements

About the author

INTRODUCTION

Before We Get Started: A Letter From The Author (That’s Me, Tristan)

Dear fellow language learner,

Great – you’ve made it to the guide! Thanks for picking it up, and I’m really excited to be able to help you develop your fluency in another language.

I first started learning languages when I was twelve, and I had no idea where it would take me. After more than fifteen years, thousands of hours of study and much laughter at my expense, I’ve learnt a lot about foreign languages. These days I speak every day with my wife in Spanish, often with friends and colleagues in Japan, and regularly with German friends. I’m learning French at the moment, so I am going through the same process as you (the fourth time around!).

Languages are a huge part of my life, and have given me huge rewards. This isn’t to say I have all the answers – far from it - and I still make quirky mistakes all the time. That’s all part of the fun.

What I hope to do with this guide is simple: give you practical, useful and fun techniques that will rapidly increase your language skills. They’re all relevant regardless of what language you’re learning: from Russian to Estonian to Portuguese, almost all of the techniques can be applied across the board.

They’re not from a textbook, they’re

[Yonatan Campos · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Nice book, easy to read, short and concise. Inspiring for people that have just started to the learning language journey. Nice job Tristan