Buy the book here on Amazon US . You can find the author's comprehensive (albeit inactive) site here. Frictionless Mastery
FOREIGN LANGUAGE ON THE FLY : THE FRICTIONLESS MASTERY METHOD
By Richard Delong
This book is a wonderful little guide to improving your speaking skills in any language, at any level. It's set of principles allows you to reframe your thoughts into a directed and concise manner to improve what you are able to actively say. It's focus and method on speaking is quite different from other Speak from Day 1 approaches, especially after it's very quantifiable 20 hour mark that is explained in the book.
It'll be hard to summarize an already short book (only 68 pages), but I wanted to pull out two main points that really impacted me and my learning.
1. Create a Conversation Habit
I have to admit, I neglected this habit for the longest time. It was only after I met a particular friend of mine, that I started to shift my attitude towards speaking with learners of my native language, English. The concept of language exchange had not gone well for me in previous years, for various reasons, so I avoided it in favor of paying for community tutors to talk to on iTalki. It felt safer and more of a guarantee.
After meeting my particular friend, and re-reading this little handbook, I re-framed my approach and started to dedicate more of my attention to fewer, but higher quality, language partners. In my current mini-project, I am exchanging English for Ukrainian with a friend I had had from way back when he did a working term here in the US. We will usually talk for 45 minutes in English, as I had contacted him first offering to help, and then we spend 15 minutes learning some basic words and verbs. So far we have been meeting for about three weeks once a week.
The largest realization after rereading the handbook and consulting with my friends is that a conversation habit is damn near crucial for maintaining momentum in most people's motivation. To show up weekly or even daily to an exchange is to commit to being there with the person. And if you're not there, it's very noticeable. That book you've been wanting to read has been sitting on your shelf for five years already, what's a few more days? That TV show that you put in your watch later is easily substituted for another garbage show that Netflix just released.
Friends, on the other hand, are sorely missed when their presence does not grace yours, and likewise yours to theirs.
2. Three Focus Questions
- Was what I just said correct?
- Would I have said what he/he just said?
- Will this [word/phrase/chunk] be of immediate use to me?
In the interest of not plagiarizing a tiny book, I've rewritten the questions posed in the book (which are better said and much more comprehensive).
These three questions allow you to probe the edges of what Richard Delong terms "your circle of command." This circle being "everything you are able to use correctly."
In a normal half hour of conversation (if you're doing an hour exchange), you might only discover two to ten words/phrases/chunks that will fit these criteria. And that is perfectly acceptable. Even better, it's desirable!
As you jot down these words, make recordings, and practice for the next opportunity you have to speak, you are slowly training those pieces of language to be in your active command of the language. These are the things you won't have to think about saying, it'll just come out naturally when you have practiced it enough. To achieve this, you have to
- Be intentional in what you pick to practice and learn.
- Limit yourself to fewer things in order to avoid overwhelm.
- Limit yourself to what you will use.
This part of the book recommends only performing this parsing to things you encounter in your conversations. Adding in things from immersion sources may not be immediately relevant to your situation, unless you try to shove them unnaturally into the conversation.
If you immediately think that this sort of limitation will quickly backfire for normal conversation, as you'll end up talking about the same subjects. Richard has heard your plight and proposes that you might push the conversation into unfamiliar territory so you can start learning those other subjects. Do you usually talk about coffee? Maybe delve into talking about home repair, as most people have a general sense of that.
Final Thoughts
The method proposed in this book is very approachable, easily applicable to learning, and is quite effective if you are intentional, focused, and disciplined about what you learn, as well as keeping your conversation sources regular.
I hope you all buy the guide. It's $5usd, a small investment for anyone, paper or e-book. And the return is huge!
For more information about the author, you can hear his awesome podcast with Kris Broholm below
He's not so much in the language space anymore, but this book is absolute gold, and timeless, as we will always have people who speak foreign languages, and recording apps will never go away.))
