3 months or 5 days?

You may be aware of Benny Lewis and his blog Fluent in 3 Months.  If so, you'll probably be aware that he's generally involved in some controversy or other.  If you had to pick someone as his "arch-rival", you'd probably have to go with Steve Kaufmann.

Now I'm not a fan of either, but this morning I was alerted to a new video Kaufmann posted on YouTube which would appear to be a direct challenge to Benny.  Not only is it called "Fluency in Five Days", but he even makes reference to the 3 month thing in his opening.  Take a look if you like:



The whole thing hangs on the meaning of "fluency" -- in technical terms, fluency is the ability to function flowingly and without (much) hesitation.  The other parts of language are "accuracy" and range.  So what he's proposing to do is just to cram as much and build his accuracy, and then immerse himself for a week to get up to speed in actually using it.

Basically it's a direct challenge to Benny's idea that you have to speak from day one (which is the name of Benny's current commercial product).  I have to say that I agree with Kaufmann on this.  I don't agree with his methodologies (or that of his commercial website Lingq), but I definitely agree that there is value to initial study without any immersive usage... as long as you later go into an immersive situation.

I've always said that the value of an immersive environment is limited by what you know going into it -- the more you know, the more you'll pick up.

I look forward to seeing Steve's results.