I’ve just finished reading Benny Lewis brand-new book Fluent in 3 months that is currently crushing Amazon’s bestseller lists. It’s the first book by a successful blogger from the language learning industry available in bookstores and that by itself is already a good reason to buy and read it. But there are several others why you should – or shouldn’t.
If you don’t know Benny Lewis yet, check out his blog –as a language learner you should definitely know him.
Who should read this book
The first thing I thought of after having read the book was: I’m not the targeted reader of this book. To me it seems as if this book was written for people who haven’t yet thought a lot about their language learning or are even entirely new to language learning. If you are an advanced language learner you might find some useful information here and there.
Besides the information the book shares a lot of inspiration and motivation and I guess this is something that is always useful, no matter how experienced you are in language learning.
If you are already familiar with Benny’s blog and have been following him for some time, the content of the book is nothing new for you. You can find nearly every story, every experience or every personal thought in the blog posts.
If you don’t know the blog very well, then this book is an ideal summary of its main content.
What I personally liked about the book
What I like best is that the reader gets reminded that language learning requires a lot of personal effort again and again. He is absolutely honest about brain-melting situations, setbacks and downs during the process.
What I like second best is that he tackles the “You have to go to the country and you’ll speak the language”-prejudice that is still buzzing around. I can get very angry when people keep saying that moving to a country is the ultimate key to language learning. Benny reports on his various experiences; from learning the language in the country to learning the language in a total different country with another language and gives useful insights into his observations.
As mentioned earlier, reading Benny’s book makes sense for those who are quite new in the field of language learning and know little about, for example, memorization techniques or the difficulties of certain languages. The structure of the book is good. He begins his story even before the real start of your language learning project by eliminating popular excuses for not learning a language. The book then takes the journey from beginner stage to mastery and speaking several languages.
What I personally didn’t like about the book
I do not agree with everything that’s written in the book, but I can’t judge the book by that. The only thing that is definitely a minus point is that the content is not new. But as already discussed, I don’t think that I’m the kind of person Benny wrote the book for.
What I appreciate about the book
Although the content is not entirely new, I’m sure Benny put a lot of effort into compiling the content over the years. When you publicly create such a catchy opinion – or even brand – as “Fluent in 3 months” you have to defend your attitude and your person against a crowd of nay-sayers.
The book is a great contribution to the language learning community, especially as it reaches out to language learners that are yet about to begin studying languages. Benny is definitely a trail-blazer for all the language bloggers and I highly appreciate his work.
Find more about the book and the author Benny Lewis on Amazon
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The stage is yours!
Have you already read Benny’s book, do you plan to read or are you likely no to? Share your opinion with us!
