Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Ultimate Guide Home Learning
Ultimate Guide Home Learning
To Learning Language
at Home, at Your Pace
This guide was designed to help you learn a language on your own, at home, with the help of our learning system.
Inside, you will learn...
• Part 1. How to Set Successful Goals • Part 4: 30 Actionable Ways to Learn a Language Right Now
• • How to practice and improve speaking, reading,
• The elements of a successful goal writing, listening, vocabulary and grammar
• How to set a routine
• What to do if you fail • Part 5: The 7 Tested, Timeless Learning Techniques & Study Tools
• How to take full advantage of the Premium &
• Part 2: 7 minutes & 7 seconds to language Premium PLUS study tools
learning success
• A super simple routine you can implement • Part 6: Bonus Content
• Radical SHOCK THERAPY to Master a Language
• Part 3: How to Turn Your Goal Into Reality with •
Your Day-by-Day Planner • The Embarrassing Technique for Speaking More of Your
• How to plan out your routine Target Language
• Note: Planner Inside
To your fluency,
Peter Galante
Founder, InnovativeLanguage.com
Problem: The number one reason why most language
learners fail is because they set huge, vague goals like “I
How will you get there? How much time will you dedicate
on a weekly basis? And what is fluency to you? Do you
want to speak about the economy in extreme detail or just
be able to talk with friends? These vague goals tend to set
you up for failure.
Bad goals:
• I want to improve my speaking skills
• Small – so that you don’t overwhelm yourself with a • Realistic – so that it’s EASY enough to fit into your
big, vague “someday, maybe I’ll reach it” goal. routine and accomplish.
• All goals are limited to 1 month. • If you do the math, learning 100 words in a month
• The 100 word and 1 minute goals are smaller than is learning 25 words a week. That’s just 5 words a
“learning words” or “becoming fluent.” day for 5 days out of the week, or around 3 words
• Measurable – so that you know when you’ll reach it a day for every day of the month. Anyone can
learn 3 easy words.
• 100 words is measurable. Either you remember all • Speaking 1 minute of conversation by the end of
100 or you only master 95. the month is realistic. You can easily take up 10
• 1 minute is measurable. You can time seconds with a greeting and an introduction of
yourself speaking. yourself and where you’re from.
• 60 lessons is measurable. Either you finished all • Finishing 60 Audio lessons in a month can be
the lessons or you’re at lesson #42. realistic if you can do 2 lessons a day for the
month. Each lesson is about 3 to 10 minutes in
length. If you can devote up to 20 minutes a day
to learning – whether on a walk or a commute to
work - this can be easily done.
Now, let’s turn your goal into a reality. The next step is to create a
routine.
And, all these goals have a
deadline. Why? Because
Let’s say your goal is to learn 100 words by the end of this month.
when will you start speaking?
However, you can apply this to any goal you set. How will you accomplish
Someday, hopefully? Specific
it? Just work backwards. Do the math; learning 100 words is...
deadlines get things done
• Learning 5 words a day for 5 days of the week for 4 weeks.
sooner rather than later.
• Learning 3-4 words a day every day for the month.
They make realizing your
• Or whichever other variation you’re most comfortable with.
dream of learning and
speaking a language happen
Now that you know how many words you should learn per day (or week)
sooner
to hit your monthly goal, let’s move on to the actual daily routine.
than “someday.”
Answer these questions.
• What?
And deadlines are your final
• Study 5 words a day.
mark of success or failure.
• How? (How will you get it done?)
Either you know all 100
• Study 5 new words provided in the 2,000 Core Word List with
words, finished all 60 lessons
Flashcards.
and hit the 1-minute mark, or
• When? (When will you study?)
you did not.
• At 9PM, every weeknight. 5 days out of 7 days of the week.
• For how long?
So, what’s your small,
• 10 minutes.
measurable goal for this
• Where?
month?
• At home, at the computer.
Write it down.
Now, you have your routine planned, all you have to do is put in the time
until you reach your goal.
First of all, congratulations! There’s a good reason why we highly
recommend these small, measurable goals – because they’re easy
WHAT TO enough to achieve...and they work! Once you hit the first one, you
gain the confidence and knowhow for setting goals and sticking
DO WHEN
with them.
YOU HIT comfortable with learning that much in a month, do 100 for the
next month. Keep the goal and routine. If it was TOO easy, which is
not a bad thing, then for your next monthly goal, scale up to 120
YOUR GOAL words. By the end of the next month you’ll know 220 words as your
goals add up as you learn for the next 6 months. Just picture this:
Month 1: 100
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Month 2: 120
Month 3: 150
Month 4: 160
Month 5: 170
+ Month 6: 160
That’s 860 words learned in 6 months. Or, if you aim for 1 minute of
conversation by the first month – just imagine – you could be
speaking for over 15 minutes in 6 months, instead of hoping to learn
and speak... one day, sometime in the unknown future.
Now, let’s say you only hit 50 or 70 words. In other words, you
came up short.
WHAT TO Don’t beat yourself up over it. There could be many reasons
why – some may be even out of your control. If your initial
goal was not realistic for your current daily routine, then
DO IF YOU maybe you need to aim a little lower if you come up short.
MISS YOUR • Forget fast. This was just one minor stumble and not worth
thinking about too much.
GOAL • Don’t beat yourself up. There could be many reasons why
you didn’t reach a goal; some may be even out of your
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• control. It’s possible that your current schedule — work,
school, life — is just too busy for this specific goal.
• Don’t double up on your goals next month to “punish”
yourself or make up for lost time. If learning 100 words was
not realistic, then 200 won’t be realistic either.
• Aim lower. If 100 was not doable, try 80 or 70 next month-
or even 50. The point of these goals is to make them easy
and realistic enough for you to achieve. You can always
scale back up later.
• And try again.
Now, you know:
E
• How to set a routine
• How to adjust your goal and routine if you fail
L
Later on in this guide, you’ll find get a day by day
calendar-planner that you can print and fill out
P
with your:
• Monthly goals
• Deadlines
M
• Daily Routines
A
keep you on track.
PART 2 routines.
7 MINUTES &
requires just 7 minutes and 7 seconds.
7 SECONDS
right? But, that’s all you need to get going with your
language learning routine and stay on track to mastery. If
you’ve had trouble sticking to language learning in the past,
TO LANGUAGE
this is for you.
SUCCESS
“AN EASY EXAMPLE OF A ROUTINE”
1
HOW TO DEVELOP A LEARNING ROUTINE
IN 7 MINUTES & 7 SECONDS A DAY.
Where did this number come from? This idea comes Nothing less. Think of it as a small, measurable and
from sitting at home and watching YouTube videos. daily goal to hit.
See, it’s very easy to get stuck on a YouTube loop.
Time just flies by. One day, as I caught myself going Now, I know a lot of self-help, motivational books say
from video to video, and realizing I was wasting my it’s all about getting to work in the “morning, morning,
time... I noticed one video was 7 minutes and 7 morning.” I’m the opposite. This doesn’t work for me.
seconds long.
What was the video about about? I don’t remember. For the first week of this month, language was the last
thing I did, right before bed.
But this number stuck with me. It’s small. It’s specific.
7
See, if I have time to watch videos, and let that time fly
by so easily, I could definitely fit in room for language
studies. So, here’s what I did. MINUTES
•••••••••••••••••
7 SECONDS
I applied this to my language studies. I decided to
study 7 minutes and 7 seconds a day.
Here’s my process: Surprisingly, I’d often go over the time limit and go as high
as 15 minutes. It was that easy to maintain.
• I’d press start on the stopwatch in the Clock App on my
iPhone. I’d set that nearby. And that’s the ultimate goal here – to make your learning
• I’d start a lesson from the Top 25 Questions You Need to routine super simple to start and super simple to keep
Know pathway. Now, quite a lot of these lessons are less going. Kind of like how it’s easy to start a YouTube
than 7 minutes. watching spree... and keep going.
• I’d review the lesson notes, the vocabulary and flashcards
for that lesson to fill up the time. This routine worked so well in the first week that language
• Or, I’d just continue on to the next lesson. learning went from being the last thing I did in a day to my
• At 7 minutes and 7 seconds, I’d stop. lunchtime routine. I’m still not a morning person, but you
can see that the priority went way up.
The goal? Simply to put that time in. That’s it.
I was able to do this every day, for the whole month.
Then, I’d be done. I mentioned our Audio/Video lessons;
that’s just one way to study. If I wanted to learn just vocab,
I’d spend that time drilling Flashcards. Same thing with need a way to actually stick to learning, this is for you.
videos on YouTube. Onward.
2
WHY THIS AMOUNT OF TIME IS ALL
YOU NEED TO GET STARTED
Routines are the cornerstone of success. And there’s simply no excuse not to find 7 minutes and 7
seconds in a day... when a day is 1,440 minutes.
If you can stick with a routine, you’re guaranteed to
master your language As mentioned earlier, it’s like your small, measurable goal
for the day.
The nice thing about 7 minutes and 7 seconds is that it’s
short. It’s almost psychological trickery that you play on All you have to do is hit that number every day.
yourself. It’s easy. It’s non-threatening. You don’t worry all
day long about having to put in hours and hours of study Then you’re done. Listeners, if you have a tough time
like college students do. And realistically speaking, that getting into a language learning routine, definitely apply
time flies by! this tactic.
3
HOW YOU CAN APPLY IT BASED
ON MY EXAMPLES
As you know, every single day and at first, right before bed, I’d start a stopwatch and start a
lesson in The Top 25 Questions Pathway.
• The only goal was to put in a minimum of 7 minutes and 7 seconds of learning.
• You can definitely go over like I did, but 7 minutes and 7 seconds is the absolute minimum.
• If your lesson is under 5 minutes, you can simply move onto the next.
• You can also review with the lesson notes and the lesson vocab.
• Send a message to your Premium PLUS teacher for 1-on-1 learning.
The easiest way to apply this is to set aside 7 minutes and 7 seconds in a day and jump into
it. And to be honest, you don’t even need to plan to set aside 7 minutes and 7 seconds. It’s
that simple.
If you’re commuting and that takes 20 or 30 minutes, that’s a perfect chance to squeeze this
in. Once your stopwatch hits 7 minutes and 7 seconds, you’re done.
Now that you have a better understanding of
How?
INTO REALITY
Here’s an example of what a day by day
schedule can look like.
WITH YOUR
PLANNER
MONTH 1 GOAL Speak 1 Minute of Language DEADLINE April 30th, 2020
E
Take lesson #1 of -Take Lesson #2 -Take Lesson #3 - Take Lesson #4 - Take Lesson #5 - Review Lessons #1-5
Absolute Beginner - Practice - Practice - Practice - Practice
Series - Review - Review - Review - Review
L
- Practice
- Review
MP
X A
E
MONTH GOAL DEADLINE
WAYS TO LEARN
you can start learning right now.
A LANGUAGE
AT HOME
PRACTICE
1 Simply press play and take any of our audio or video lessons.
LISTENING Listen to the dialog track only to immerse yourself in the target language.
4 Take the Listening Comprehension Lessons that quiz you on how well you
understand the dialogue.
SPEAKING
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 7 Read the lesson dialog – found in the Dialog section and Lesson Transcript
– out loud.
8 Record yourself with the Voice Recorder – found in the Dialog section – to
compare your speaking and pronunciation with native speakers’.
9 Record voice messages and send them to your Premium PLUS teacher,
via the MyTeacher tool, to have your speaking analyzed and corrected.
WRITING
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 12 Write a comment in the lesson’s comment section using the words and
grammar you’ve learned. Our teachers will respond with feedback.
13 Create sentences with the new words you learn with the Word of the Day,
Vocabulary Lists or the Core 100-2,000 Word Lists.
14 Dictation: Write down the dialog as you hear it while playing an audio or
video lesson.
Send samples of your writing to your Premium PLUS teacher, via the
18 Save the Lesson Transcript and Lesson Notes as PDFs, print out, and
review at a later date.
19 Set a goal of reading a dialog five times per day. Why? Repetition is
the mother of all learning, so your reading will only get better.
LEARN NEW
22 Sign up for the FREE Word of the Day and get new words
delivered to your inbox daily.
WORDS &
23 Learn words and phrases based on themes, holidays and
PHRASES real-life topics with the Free Vocabulary Lists. Always updated!
Save newly learned words and access them all in one place
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
24 with WordBank for future review.
Hint: Save words from Vocab Lists, Core Word Lists, WordBank
and Audio/Video Lessons to the WordBank.
25 the words and quiz you so that you never forget them.
Hint: Create Flashcard Decks from words found in the Vocab
Lists, Core Word Lists, WordBank and Audio/Video Lessons.
HOW TO
26 Listen to Audio lessons. With every conversation presented, you learn
the grammar rules that are used in the lesson.
LEARN
GRAMMAR 27 Search for the Grammar Point. Use the Advanced Search to find
lessons that contain the specific grammar point you’re after.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
28 Access the Grammar Bank. Unlock detailed write-ups covering 100+
grammar points.
But do you know about all of the Study Tools that are
available to you?
THE 7 TESTED,
Do you know how to squeeze the most value out of
each one?
Here are the 7 study tools you must take advantage of.
TECHNIQUES &
STUDY TOOLS
1
The learning technique you can apply here is shadowing. This
simply means repeating the lines out loud as you hear them. So
THE TECHNOLOGY: as you listen to the dialogue, you can read along and read out
loud and shadow the native speaker. This is one proven
technique that will seriously improve your speaking.
Line-by-Line Audio
But that’s not all. There are other ways you can learn with the
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Line-by-Line.
You can also...
• Perfect your reading and comprehension skills. Read along as
you take a lesson and understand everything.
• Perfect your listening skills by listening to lines of the dialog
again and again.
• Perfect your pronunciation by recording yourself and
comparing with a native speaker.
The Vocabulary Lists can’t talk about the things they’re interested in and
they can’t last very long in a conversation.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Building a list of talking points will not only help you
speak MORE of the language, but you’ll also have a
list of words and phrases for topics you’re truly
interested in.
But it gets better. You can send your lists to the Word
Bank or your Flashcards. These are two powerful
study tools that we’ll get into next.
3 The learning technique here is...building your own
language profile.
THE TECHNOLOGY: Let’s recap: the Word Bank is your personal collection
of words. Any new word you learn or you’re interested
in, you can save it there.
The Word Bank And just as we mentioned talking points before, you
can send the Vocab Lists to the Word Bank. You then
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
have a collection of words and phrases that match
your interests and lifestyle – your language profile.
With the Word Bank, you can create your very own
language learning profile.
4 The technique here? It’s spaced repetition learning.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
If you don’t know a word or a phrase, your teacher will make
sure to show you that card more often, until you master the
meaning. And the easy ones? You’ll see them a lot less, but
enough to keep them in your memory.
And the Flashcard system will sort it all for you. In fact, you
can use this next tool with our Flashcards.
5 This is a list of the 2,000 must-know words and phrases.
THE TECHNOLOGY:
The technique? Curated words that you absolutely need
for fluency.
The Core Word Lists The fact is that there are tons of words out there that you
don’t need to know.
That’s why this is so important. Here, you get carefully
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
selected words and phrases broken down by category, and
they’re a must for everyday life.
2000
these can be broken down by subcategories (such as
Everyday Words: Adjectives, Questions, Numbers and
Common Actions) to make learning easier.
WORDS
The Core Word Lists give you just the words and phrases
you actually need to know.
Talking points.
The Daily Dose of The Daily Dose App gives you topics to talk about. If you can
talk to a native speaker about a holiday or a cultural point, you’re
Language App making some serious language learning progress.
You already have full access to this App and with it, you get
daily, bite-sized lessons.
THE TECHNOLOGY: Since a lot of our listeners don’t have immediate access to
native teachers...or simply cannot attend classes, this serves
1-on-1 Learning with as the next best solution. It’s a solution that combines a
massive language learning system with a native speaker who
knows the ins and outs of the lessons you’re taking.
Your Premium PLUS
You get direct, 1-on-1 access to your own teacher and this is,
Teacher without a doubt, the best language practice you can get. With
this you can:
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
• Send language questions
• Send casual exchanges for practice
• Ask for learning advice
• Send voice recordings of yourself
• Send videos or images
• Receive personalized assignments
• Be held accountable for your progress
Now, if you have the Innovative Language 101 App, you can
get in touch and learn with your teacher anywhere, anytime.
PART 6
BONUS CONTENT
Lessons Inside:
1. How Loss Aversion Can Help Boost Your Motivation
2. What a Small Group of Dedicated JapanesePod101
A
Members Did to Reach Their Language Goals
SHOCK
What’s so important about paying money?
By not using our site, you’re losing your $25 investment every month.
Now, are you more inclined to study after looking at it that way? You
should at least be considering it. Stay with me.
Back then, I had a private Chinese lesson once a week on the outskirts
of town. It was pretty far and out of the way. And kind of a hassle to get
there. But, I never, ever missed my class.
particular class?
No, my teacher’s appearance and my passion for language are not the
top reasons. Ready for the secret?
In case you think this sounds absolutely insane... Want to guess what the average fine was?
You’re right. That’s exactly why we never advertised
this. Imagine the reactions! It was meant only for our Yep. Around $10. People fined once learned their
most serious learners who knew just how powerful lesson. And FAST. Most achieved complete success
loss aversion is as a motivator. and were never fined again. Interesting, right?
So, how do you think this group did? This radical tactic worked for me. A $30 dollar fine
helped me get my Chinese from zero to upper
That’s right. They completed courses faster. Used the intermediate level. I never missed another class, and
site longer. You name it, they did better. Across the the more I went, the faster the progress.
board they outperformed regular users.
What does this all mean? Is this an advertisement for the Fluency
At All Costs Bootcamp?
And it’s not even about money. Money is just one example
since it has value. If you sincerely value your time, you’ll learn
faster than any casual learner because you know you’re losing
time in exchange for mastering a language.
I’ll tell you! First of all, I really like flying. And I like it
HABITS YOU’LL This is what the majority of people all over the world are
LEARN ON A
doing at any given time. If they’re not at work or school,
they’re eating, sleeping, watching TV or sitting in the
bathroom. And the airplane gives me a random sample of
ENVIRONMENT one lady was willing to talk. I asked her how she
could just sit down and do her tasks. What she said
was this: “There’s never a good time or place to do
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• anything. You just do it anyway.” All the people I’ve
spoken to on flights have said something similar.
In terms of language learning: there’s You need to internalize that fact: there will never be a perfect time
never a good time or a good place. or place to learn. Don’t wait for that perfect moment – just start
anyway. But I know that it’s one thing to say this, and another thing
This is a fact. Years and years of to actually do it.
surveys sent to our users show us the
same result – Time is the #1 reason So, I wanted to know exactly how they could sit down and work.
people don’t learn a language. Let’s get into the second point.
can I get done in the next 7 hours?” This is definitely not a What is your answer?
question you’d ask yourself if you weren’t at work or at
school. A lot of people don’t. That’s why it’s only one or So, what did I do after asking this question? Let’s move
two people doing work on a plane. onto the final point.
At least for me, I know that at 8PM after work is done, it’s
family time. No work. No languages. And like most people,
I’ll be eating, watching TV, going to the bathroom and
sleeping! Just like the people on the plane. We don’t take
advantage of the limited periods of time we have. So, if
you can reassess how you spend your time, whether
you’re commuting, at home or at lunch, and then ask
yourself the question...
3 On the flight back, I asked myself how I could put this
limited 7-hour time frame to use. The answer is
obvious – by studying Spanish.
THE IMPORTANCE What did I do next? I stopped thinking. I switched my
mind into study mode and dove right in. And 4 out of
OF DEVELOPING the 7 hours went into studying Spanish. The rest of
course, were used for sleeping, bathroom and eating.
What exactly did I do?
Again, this is all easy to say and write about, but hard to do.
What do you do?
Essentially, you
In fact, I don’t know why I didn’t use it earlier... it’s like rocket fuel in
terms of boosting your language progress.
That’s it. But don’t discount this method just because it’s simple;
there’s a ton of benefit in it for you.
Here’s a quick story. I used to teach English in Japan and I had one
very high level student. Now, 9 out of 10 high-level English
speakers have lived overseas and learned by being in
THE EMBARRASSING English-speaking environments, at least in my experience.
SPEAKING MORE OF I asked him, “How’d you get so good?” He told me his secret: he
spoke to the TV and to himself. With the TV, he mimicked what the
YOUR TARGET actors said. He responded to them as if he was having
conversations with them. And when he was talking to himself, he’d
LANGUAGE describe everything that he was doing in English. It worked for him.
So, I figured I should try it for myself with Japanese. I started
speaking to myself in Japanese.
1
Picture this: I’d wake up in the morning, get out of bed
and I’d ask myself, “What am I going to do today, Peter?”
2
Now that I’m casually studying German, I have a Premium PLUS
subscription with GermanPod101, which comes with 1-on-1
teacher access.
APPLIED THIS That’s one message, about 10 seconds long. In the afternoon, it’d be
something like “I ate a sandwich.
TECHNIQUE would be about what I had for dinner and “I watched TV.”
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
If it sounds too good to be true, remember, we’re NOT Imagine how far your language could go in terms of
talking about politics or splitting the atom. I was simply speaking if you speak out loud and get non-stop
talking about my daily routine. Just to give you a feedback.
comparison:
So, how can you do it?
3
The first step? Let go of your pride!
HOW YOU CAN kids were getting onto me. “Why are you talking to
yourself, daddy? Why are you on the phone? Why are you
repeating things?”
APPLY THIS WITH And if you do it outside... people give you looks.
To your fluency,
Peter Galante
Founder, InnovativeLanguage.com