I’m Kyle, and I never liked my language classes in school.
They were always just another class for me, and they didn’t emphasize conversation and personal connection.
But everything changed when I got to go to Germany on exchange in 10th grade.
All of a sudden, I couldn’t communicate well with the people around me.
And the struggle became very real.
I couldn’t even ask for the bathroom without making a fool of myself and not understanding.
I was so disgusted in my lack of preparation, so I desperately googled:
“How to actually learn to speak a language”
And I found Fluent in 3 Months, which became my absolute bible.
I immediately cut off all English in my daily life.
I listened to only German music, watched only German videos, and insisted on speaking only German with the people around me.
This was incredibly exhausting and frustrating, but it’s also the best thing I’ve ever done.
It helped me learn exponentially faster, and opened my mind to the beauty and endless joys of learning another language.
After this experience, I’d caught the language bug, and I couldn’t stop learning new ones.
Growing up, I had some great Brazilian friends, but they all moved back to Brazil from the US, so I knew that had to be the next language I learned.
The thing is, that I’ve never successfully ‘chosen’ to learn a language just because I want to. I’ve tried, but always failed.
This is because my only sustained motivation is the people I meet.
I reach a certain critical mass of friends from other countries, and then it becomes clear that I have to learn their language.
With Portuguese, I decided to do something really crazy. With only a little preparation, I landed in Brazil at the end of my senior year in high school.
And this time, I went FULL IMMERSION beast mode. I committed 100% to only Portuguese, all day, every day, for two weeks.
This was by far the hardest and wildest thing I’ve ever done. I was so exhausted I fell asleep in an enormous market in the middle of São Paulo:
But it was also by far the most rewarding challenge I’ve ever set for myself. Thanks to my musical preparation, language learning experience, and living with my friend and his family (and even going to school with him!), within those two weeks I became conversationally fluent in Portuguese.
(Interesting caveat: at that point, I could only understand the other boys my age – the girls’ conversations were still a mystery to me! I think this has a lot to do with slang, topics, and me living in a house with four other guys)
Aside from the incredible result though, this experience absolutely crushed me, mentally and physically. I cried multiple times, out of sheer frustration and also pure joy.
When I went to bed, I would have random snippets of Portuguese popping into my head and playing back, from things I’d been hearing throughout the day.
It was a fascinating experience, trying an intense full immersion with almost no preparation, but something I’ll probably never do again and wouldn’t recommend to almost anyone.
From these experiences, I’ve learned the value of serious preparation before landing in another place where you’re surrounded by a new language.
Now, I take my time preparing much more beforehand, building up a solid base of sound recognition, conversation exchanges, and lots and lots of music exposure before I send myself off to another country.
Over the past ten years, I’ve successfully learned five languages to conversational fluency with excellent accents – German, Portuguese, French, Hungarian, and Spanish.
I’ve learned so many things from these experiences, and after all these years, frustrations, elations, and preparations, I have a lot to share with other language learners.
Thanks for checking out my site, and welcome to Hear Listen Speak!