Velocity Instant Fluency (4)

The Arrow

Here is the entire conversation mapped onto a simple Arrow. This is an amazing tool. Build one in your new language, and keep it with you all the time. Fall in love with your new language Conversation Arrow:

Keep THEM Talking: The point of a real conversation is to keep people talking so that you will learn your new language. The counterpoint to this is that the best way to keep them talking is to have an authentic conversation about what matters most in life. Don’t worry about getting it right, just keep the conversation flowing. Love making mistakes.

The Conversation Deal:

I will be interested in you, if you will help me learn my new

language.

Your conversational partners will understand this deal. They get that you are looking for a practice partner, and they will probably generously give you their time because they are enjoying the conversation. If they are having fun, they will keep coming back for more!

More Talk

Prepare in Advance: When he was learning Polish, Powell Janulus explained how he did his homework to prepare for his daily conversations with his grocer. Each day, before he went off to shop, he built an Enchart with a few questions relating to a specific topic.

Powell’s Polish Questions:

Questions about the neighborhood.

Questions about an item in the daily news.

Questions about other customers.

Questions about current affairs.

Questions about sporting events.

Questions about TV programs.

If he had enough rapport and the store owner didn’t seem busy, he would bring out all the questions he had about the language itself. He would build Encharts for technical questions and keep them in reserve. He would always try his best to ask these questions in Polish.

How to Approach the Conversation:

Pick a relaxed moment to approach people.

Relax, take a deep breath and put a smile on your face.

Show genuine curiosity when you ask your questions.

Find something positive to admire about that person.

Show interest and respect in what they have to say.

Show you want to be like them.

Build an Enchart Chat:

Plan the sentence practice on a small Enchart.

Stick to one topic.

Ask open-ended questions so that the person replies to you.

Repeat what they say back to them – the way they said it.

Be curious and ask for more info: ”Tell me more about that… ”

Adopt a bit of their tone, tempo and accent when you start to reply.

Enjoy them… people like people who like them.

Make them laugh.

Add More People

One of the main keys to success is adding more people. You cannot learn a language by yourself. Add more people to build more energy and learning momentum.

Social Learning: Build Your Instant Fluency Group. Start small with a buddy or a trusted team of 3-5

people. Practice on a weekly basis. Give a report after you finish your practice play and games each day. Declare your goals to your committed listener. Share your New Language Identity to make it stronger. Appreciate each other’s successes and small accomplishments.

Find Your New Language Community: Building or joining any kind of a learning community or meeting group is one of the most powerful ways to accelerate your language practice outside real life conversations. In the very best case, you can create or join a club, community or group that is founded on the learning principles of this book.

A Velocity community, group or team will serve you on many levels. It will give you people with whom you can practice. It will allow you to work with people who are committed. It will keep your learning rooted in the principles of Velocity Learning.

Connect with People Everywhere and Everywhen: Open that door, go outside and talk to the first person you see. Do this now.

“ Usually I talk a lot in Chinese, but when I speak English, I am shy. With Velocity I learned to just start talking. Open my mouth and talk. This is the key. Flora - Beijing ”

10 Mapping

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“Grammar Rules Kill Spoken Fluency”

Here is another key paradox of language learning: The more you study grammar rules, the less fluent you become. Think about it. Each time you add a new grammar rule, you are sending an instruction to yourself: “This is right and that is wrong.” The Reptilian System loves this sort of rules-based yes or no thinking. However, the Reptilian System has a very limited capacity to deal with complexity.

Unless you have taken the time to condition these rules into automatic habits, you usually hit Brain Freeze. This is the mind-lock process in which you try to speak and get... nothing. You might even know you know the words, but nothing pops out.

This business of Brain Freeze is most evident when we run the Velocity breakthrough programs in China. Most of the students have studied English for 6-9 years in a harsh system of memorization and

grammar-based rules. Using those rules, most students can construct written sentences and use them to pass the tests. However, when they go to speak, they tend to freeze. This kind of student is the IDEAL

student for Velocity Learning. They know the language and they know the rules. They simply have never gone through any process to condition their spoken ability. Following the Velocity methodology, it only takes a few days to create a breakthrough.

Don’t Do Rules. Instead, Learn the Map.

Fear No Language Structure

Don’t let the structure of the language scare you. Don’t ever use the word grammar again. Instead, build a simple map of your new language. Every language has a basic structure and, in most cases, it is easy to pick up.

Higher Order Communication vs. Lower Order Rules: The key idea is that humans have a basic set of communication needs. The map is just an agreed-upon structure of how we express those basic communication needs in any given language. At the highest level, communication is dead simple. You can desperately yell “food” and people will understand that you are hungry. As you go deeper into the structure of the language, the complexity increases. Focus on communication before complexity. Once you are communicating in a basic way in your new language, you will be able to quickly extend your map of the territory.

Universal Communication Needs are the Higher Order system that governs all communication. Have a look at this pyramid. At the top of the pyramid, communication is simple. We set an intention to communicate and work our way down through the communication needs. At the bottom of the pyramid, we express that communication through our language habits. The language we speak is a Lower Order System.

Below the language is the structure of the language. These are the ‘nuts and bolts’ that hold the language together. This is a much Lower Order System. You will notice that the pyramid gets wider at the bottom. At the bottom, there are a vast number of rules and conventions. This is a basic rule: Complexity increases as you go deeper into the language. If you start your learning process at the top of the pyramid, language fluency can be simple and easy. If you start from the bottom up, you are in for a rough ride. Trying to learn your new language through a filter of all its grammar rules is the ideal way to make the process complex and difficult.

Don’t try to understand it. Just Condition it.

In traditional language learning, we worry about getting it RIGHT, so we try to memorize all the instances and exceptions. This is a bulk heavy lifting approach because we can’t use our natural ability to learn through speaking. We explored Encharts. We simplified the communication system by removing almost every element of grammar, with the exception of Word Order. In this chapter, we are going to begin to incrementally bring grammar back into your new language system. Here are a few examples to get you thinking about grammar in a fresh way.

The key approach to Mapping out the structure of any language is to build a series of Encharts which gradually introduce the structural map of the language. The more you condition, the more grammar you add to your Encharts. Over time, the essential language maps become more detailed as does the map you begin to build and use. With repetition, this will become simple and automatic.

Anyone who understands advanced grammar will find these concepts mind-numbingly simple. Even if you are not a student of advanced grammar, these concepts appear naturally inherent to understand in your own language. BUT, when you try applying this knowledge to the alien architecture of a new language, it can feel like you are trying to turn your brain inside out.

Communication or a Ph.D. in Linguistics? A linguist might laugh at the simplistic approach that we are presenting here. We are explaining language structure in the most primitive way. Don’t you want to MASTER the language and confidently EXPRESS complex ideas?

Be careful what you wish for. Early in your learning process, you will have to make a decision. Do you want to develop the ability to have real conversations and communicate in your new language?

Or would you most enjoy pushing on for a Ph.D. in linguistics and never being able to speak at all.

This may sound extreme, but over the years, we have seen so many students spend years trying to

‘perfect’ the complex structures of languages like English or German.

To use a Language is to Change it:

Necessity is the mother of invention. When people have a challenging communication need, they naturally invent new words or use them in a new way. We often think of a language as a static set of words and meanings. However, language is really a set of personal associations which get linked to a set of mouth movements and sounds. We call this process Languaging. As we communicate, we naturally harmonize and agree on the associations that we use to create our words. Across our language culture, this happens at such a scale that it is hard to see the massive averaging process that is going on. Because so many of us all agree on a relatively similar set of associations, we forget that language is actually a personal process. How do you know that what you call the color blue is the same color blue that anyone else sees? You can never know this because you will never see through another person’s eyes.

When you contain language in a smaller group size or a more isolated setting, it is easier to see it moving. This is very evident in technical communities and in street language. In these environments, the broad social agreements for language don’t always fit with the communications needs, so the community creates unique jargon or slang. If a group gets isolated for long enough, perhaps several hundred years, they may even become unable to communicate in their original language. This is how all of the estimated 6,900 languages in the world today were created.

Language is a set of shared communication habits that build up over time. As they develop, they get more complex. A word like ‘no’ might seem really simple, but negatives can actually be expressed in complex ways. A phrase like “don’t stop thinking about the pink ball that isn’t bouncing” is actually a whole bunch of complex negative ideas jammed together. To decode this, we need an agreed-upon set of conventions, otherwise the communication won’t transmit. Over time, those conventions get more complex. In some instances, the conventions don’t work well, so we agree on an exception. The problem is all those instances and exceptions. Every language has its own particular approach to resolving all instances and exceptions, and there are an awful lot of them. If you try to learn them all too quickly, it will easily overwhelm your ability to speak.

Native speakers don’t usually know the grammar rules; they just talk. They set an intention to communicate, open their mouths and words come out. They live in the world of their language and have been conditioned since a young age. They NEVER think about the rules. This is the essence of what makes this approach powerful. The underlying structure of any language is mind-numbingly obvious to a native speaker, but alien to a new language learner. In order to build spoken language flow, you have to act like a native speaker. Spend lots of time Conditioning your Encharts, and the rest will happen automatically.

Yoda on Grammar

“ Once you start down the dark path , forever will it dominate your destiny . Consume you it will .”

Communication Before Complexity: Velocity offers a simple way to explain grammar concepts because simplicity is the essence of what makes learning fast and easy. In order to learn grammar, all you need to do is to gradually discover the map of your new language by Encharting more and more complex conversations.

From Simple to Complex: You can think about language structure using the following range from simple to complex:

All of these communications could help you get a taxi. However, you can see that there is a big range from simple to complex. We are adding many extra layers of formality and detail. Now try to imagine building these same levels of complexity in your new language. Rather than just memorizing the phrase, imagine that you were really Conditioning the ability to construct these sentences naturally, in the middle of a conversation. What would the process of building all the Encharts look like?

We chose this simple way to explain the structure of language because simplicity is what makes the Velocity system powerful. In order to go deeper, all you need to do is to gradually discover the map of your new language by Encharting out more and more complex conversations.

Your Bridge to Fluency

Build your bridge to fluency with a series of Encharts that begin to map out the range from simple to complex. Below we have a set of Encharts that start simple and build in complexity. This is an ideal example of the kind of learning tools that you can build for yourself in your new language. You will notice that we have added a story line to keep it interesting. We have also added in an opening question so that you can imagine that you are in a conversation. All of these Encharts use the 4x4

Encharting approach, so that you can use any word from each column and always get a correct sentence.

Office Chat in Your New Job: Imagine that you are starting work in a great new job. You are really excited to be working in this company. What are some of the conversations you might have with your colleagues in the first few weeks?

How is your new job?

How do you like your project?

How do you like the training?

Where does your manager work?

How do they like working with clients?

When were they going to complete that project?

Why weren’t the negotiations successful?

Enchart from Simple to Complex: You can see from this process that there is a big range from the easy Encharts at the beginning to the complex Encharts at the end. You can see that advanced grammar concepts are getting mapped into the Encharts toward the end. However, you don’t need to understand all these advanced grammar ideas to use them. The map of the language is built into each Enchart.

It does take time to build Encharts like this. However, building these Encharts is one of the best learning activities. You can build them on your own or work with a small learning group and share each other’s Encharts. It takes time to condition the Encharts at each level. As you condition the Encharts through repetition, the structure of the language will naturally become part of you. If you take the time to work your way through this process, you will build fluency fast.

How to Begin to Your Map: Depending on the language you are learning, you will have to deal with some of the basic structures of that language. At the simple end of things, these structures can be very easy to map out and ready to use right away. As you go deeper, the complexity will increase, and you will have to spend more time Conditioning the simpler elements before going even deeper.

Simple Language Structures:

Word Order: Humans need to agree on a sentence Word Order so that communications can be understood. Using the basic Word Types, you can map out some simple ‘template sentences’ in the correct Word Order. Unless you have a native speaker handy, you will have to test it a few times to work it into a working 4x4 Enchart. Google Translate is a great tool to assist in this, although some results are incorrect. Here are some common Word Order patterns: You will notice that English and Mandarin are also the same, whereas Japanese is very different. It is critical to note that these Word Order patterns are not absolute. Check with a native speaker. There are many ways to construct a sentence. These patterns are simply a good starting point for building simple Encharts.

English:

who, why, action, what, where, when

Mandarin:

who, why, where, what, when

Japanese:

when, who, where,what,action,why

Word Types: Human language will always have a universal set of communication needs that will be reflected in words such as WHO, WHY, HOW, ACTION, WHAT, WHERE and WHEN. You will always find words that don’t fit into this simplistic set. You may have to default to traditional grammar descriptions at some point. However, starting with these seven basic Word Types is one of the fastest ways to decode a new language. In the beginning, focus on a basic set of Who, Why and Action words. This will provide the perfect foundation for Instant Fluency.

Questions: Conversations run on open-ended questions, so learning the structure of questions is a priority. Open-ended questions work best, so this is a priority for Mapping.

Scaling Emotions: Humans have a fundamental need to express a range of emotions. Encharting a range of responses from positive to negative is a key activity. Try this with a number of questions, and see if you can reuse the same emotional scales of responses.

Negatives: Most languages have a simple way to flip sentences into the negative. This is very useful to get into your early Encharts.

Plurals: Every language will have some simple ways to differentiate one thing or many things and count multiples.

Tense: Humans have a fundamental need for speaking about the past, present and future. This can range from the very simple to the very complex. In Mandarin, this is dead simple; simply mention the WHEN at the end of the sentence and nothing else changes. Compare this to English in which everything modifies something else. We will introduce some strategies shortly.

Don’t Memorize the Map – Condition it: Many people find they are in over their heads when they try to understand and memorize the entire grammatical system all at once, early in the process of learning their new language. Consequently, they miss the first few baby steps of using simple Encharts – first in solo play and later in playful conversations. Baby steps are the natural way to fluency.

Use it or Lose it: The power of Conditioning the language structure is how quickly you can use it to have simple conversations with real people. This embeds the learning in a real context. It sticks. As you speak each distinction, you begin to develop that skill in dialogue. In short, you have to use it to make it stick. Otherwise, it is just a bunch of abstract maps with too many rules.

If something’s worth doing... it’s worth doing badly (in the

beginning).

- G. K. Chesterton

Mapping Challenges:

Get Messy with the Language Structure: When you start to increase the complexity of the language in your Encharts and conversations, you are going to make mistakes. Recharge your ‘love making mistakes’. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly in the beginning. Don’t even think of your stumbles as mistakes. Think of them as interesting opportunities to develop your language maps.

Some languages are easier than others, and some languages were invented to torture language learners. However, for every Mapping challenge, someone somewhere has developed an easy way to sort it out. Below are some of the big challenges and best strategies.

Blame it on the Vikings: English can be a real challenge. It is filled with many language structures that don’t appear in Asian languages. English speakers delight in using bits of the language left over from the time of Shakespeare. All this can be overwhelming. This isn’t your fault. Blame it on the Vikings. The Viking invasion in the 10th century created the English language. What you get today is a strange mixture of Latin, French and German with lots of Gaelic, Scottish and Irish roots. If you are starting to learn English, start slow and blame all the complexity on the Vikings.

This Modifies That: Many languages are full of modifiers. That is, things that modify other things. This is one of the great challenges. Ask your linguistics professors, and they will give you all the rules for sorting this out. There is only one problem: a few little exceptions. It turns out that there are tons of exceptions. The rule is that there are no rules, only a few guidelines.

Here is a simple approach to all those modifiers: divide and conquer. Break all those concepts apart, and build working Encharts for each variation. Try to build a working 4x4 Enchart where all of the modifiers are the same. This way, you can practice Conditioning the same correct pattern without having to think about the rules. This builds your speaking habits and conversational flow. Later, you can contrast different modifier variations to condition the difference. Trying to memorize all those rules and exceptions won’t help much. You have to condition the patterns. Here are some examples in English.

To Be or Not To Be: The infinitive English verb ‘to be’ requires a special note. This verb is a very unique element of the English language. It best fits as a special case of the WHY word type. This includes all of its variants: ‘to be’, ‘he is’, ‘I am’, ‘she won’t’, etc. These grammar concepts are some of the most challenging and non-translatable ideas in the English language. For people learning English, beginner Encharts should avoid the use of these words. By avoiding these

ideas, we can support new language learners to quickly have an experience of using their new language in real communication. However, almost every grammar concept can be expressed in a simple way using Encharts. When you are ready, take on some of the following challenges.

Masculine – Feminine: Anyone who has studied French, Spanish or German has grappled with the masculine and feminine word forms and how they modify words around them. The same modifier strategy we used above can work here. Build sets of Encharts entirely in the masculine form and feminine form. This way, you can condition the patterns separately. However, many beginners take an even easier approach: pick one. Simply pick one of the forms and stick to it for the beginning period. This will reduce complexity until you can condition the language patterns.

Negatives: Researchers theorize that humans first developed the idea of negatives around 10,000

years ago. Before this, humans could want things, but they couldn’t express reversals or say what they did not want. This might seem like a strange idea. Recall that zero is the more formal mathematical expression of a similar idea. The zero was only developed in India around 1,600 years ago. Humans have a basic need to say “no” and talk about things that are not here. How will you learn to express these negative ideas in your new language? There is always an easy way, you just have to find it.

Verb Tense Timeline: How does your new language deal with time and action? One of the trickiest elements in English and many other languages is how Verbs change tense and how this modifies other things in a sentence. This can be one of the biggest challenges in learning a new language. How can Velocity make this fast fun and easy?

When Marilyn first studied Janulus and Halipov, she made a startling discovery. She found that both of them had independently developed a similar strategy for quickly internalizing verb tense modifications using a Timeline Learning strategy.

Timeline Learning

In the 1980’s a number of NLP researchers including Tad James, developed a powerful system for understanding human learning based on how people encode their internal representation of time into a line that they imagine in their mind. They found that most humans organize their internal experience of time into a line stretching from past to present to future in their internal mental space. They found that most cultures tend to put the past on the left side of the body, the present in the centerline and the future to the right. Using a timeline strategy to speed up your Verb Tense learning is easy. Here’s how to do it:

1. Create a line: This can be a line on the floor on a table front of you. Mark out the past on the left, the present at the center of your body and the future on your right. Post it note on a table work well. Post-it note on the floor are even more powerful.

2. Build you verb list: Build a word-list of verb tense combinations or verb conjugations. Also build a phrase or mini-sentence for each combination. Include some irregular verbs that don’t follow the pattern. Here is an example for English:

1. Use physical space: Create a rhythmic drill. On the table, place a Post-it note in the right spot as you say each word aloud. On the floor, step onto the Post-it note as you say each word aloud 2. Energize and Repeat: Condition the process through repetition. Add rhythm and melody. Turn the sequence into a song that repeats. Form the line in your mind. Build up to short phrases.

Timeline Learning is a very simple process that produces startling results. Once you begin to build the line, it will generalize out to include all verb combinations. Once you have developed this line internally you can use it to pull in any verb, in the right tense, when you need it. If you keep following the sentence patterns, many speaking errors

will simply disappear.

How do You Fall in Love with Your New Language? Confidence comes from fluency, but not the kind of ‘never make a mistake’ fluency that so many people get stuck on. We are talking about the

REAL fluency that can only come from the JOY you feel when speaking your new language. This is a very specific sensation of loving everything about communicating in your new language. This, in fact, is the only thing that separates a new speaker from a native speaker – this one key experience of loving your language. You can even love making mistakes.

Relax and Enjoy Your New Language Now: You could spend a lifetime waiting for an external evaluation of your acceptance into the club of native speakers, or you can simply start enjoying your new language now. What is fluency anyway? Fluency has the same Latin root as fluid. Fluency is when your words FLOW like water. You relax and enjoy speaking, and your words begin to flow. If you do this, you will start to communicate and think naturally in your new language.

Why Conjugate Verbs? If you think back to learning French in Grade 10, likely all you can remember is conjugating verbs…a lot of them! This was clearly a job for bulk memorization. No one ever told us WHY we had to memorize all those verb conjugations. There was no context so there was nothing for the memorization to stick to. In my experience, WHY we had to memorize all those verb conjugations was so obvious to my French teacher, a native French speaker, that she couldn’t explain it when I asked her. That was simply the way that French should be spoken. For me, conjugation became a set of rules that must be obeyed in order to pass the grade. – Paul Gossen Grammar is Magic: Did you know the word grammar means ‘magic’ in Old English? In the 14th century, the word gramarye entered English from the French word grammaire, which meant learning. This represented a broad range of learning that including Latin and philology. As time went on, the learning associated with gramarye came to include astrology and magic ‘grimoire.’ The word acquired a secondary meaning of occult power in the 15th century. This is the meaning that also evolved into the Scottish word glamour, which in the modern world is like a ‘spell of beauty.’

Ye gipsy-gang that deal in glamor, And you, deep-read in hell’s black grammar, Warlocks and witches. – Robert Burns 1793

11 Confidence

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How do you become confident in your ability to speak?

“Usually I talk a lot in Chinese, but when I spoke English, I was shy.

With Velocity I learned to just start talking. Open my mouth – start talking. This is the key.” – Flora, Beijing

Take a Risk

Here is the challenge. Each time you put together a sentence and try to communicate, you take a little risk. Will the other person understand you? Each time you see the light in their eyes that acknowledges they have understood you, your confidence increases. This is why you can only go so far with books. Real conversations are the only path to fluency. Keep talking to people in your new language every day.

How do Kids Learn with Confidence? Small children are confident because they have no concept of self-evaluation. A small child learns language easily because they want to speak. They believe that everyone is just as interested in speaking with them too. A child treats learning as delightful play. To feel the confidence of a child is easy if you continue to treat yourself as a beginner with full rights to practice any time with anyone.

Fluency is like climbing a rope. Your newly acquired language skills give you the confidence to get a foothold and start. You can be confident that the rope will hold you by engaging in ongoing practice; you lean on the rope of previously learned material as you climb further. A child is always confident in this way. Children always learn as native speakers. They feel at home in their new language and are native speakers from the very beginning. Anyone can take on this mindset.

How do You Rebuild Easy Language Confidence? As you converse with a native speaker, allow yourself to totally engage with them. When you begin, allow yourself to have a child’s free-flowing attention, as much as you can. The easiest way is to start with open-ended questions. Plan your first conversation. Enchart it out on cards, and keep them ready in in your pocket. Jump in and start speaking like a native.

Enjoy Making Mistakes: The amazing vocal range of a native speaker is very different from what is possible for the new speaker. Many language-learning schools teach advanced pronunciation and complex grammar from the start. This can quickly discourage the beginning learner’s desire to converse. We suggest skipping the obstacle of trying to speak with 10 out of 10

perfection. In fact, the key to confidence is to do the opposite.

Make More Mistakes

To be confident, you have to increase the number of mistakes you make. You do this by talking in your new language ALL the time. It’s necessary to develop brazen confidence no matter how silly your new language sounds to you. You simply have to be a little cocky and actually enjoy the process of making mistakes. Confidence is not about absolute correctness. Confidence comes with testing yourself as a learner and trial speaker, by jumping in and making mistakes.

What do you talk about? Anything! You might talk about the weather, the elevator you are in, the

season, or the topic of language learning itself. You know a real two-way conversation is taking place when native speakers are verbally interacting with you about something – even if the topic is a simple one! Talk, listen and respond with interest and appreciation.

I must Speak Perfectly: In our studies of master language learners, the pleasure of speaking always seems to be the main incentive for learning. Successful learners want to talk.

Confidence builds quickly when people lower their perfection standards and raise their willingness to jump in and speak as often as they can. Take pleasure in a simple chat.

Suppose you are learning to speak French. Your first step is to become adept with basic tongue speed practice. With time, you will be able to ‘shift gears’ to say a variety of sentences quickly with a relaxed mouth. It will take time to develop the tonal nuance – the wonderfully hollow, musical and nasal quality of a native French speaker. Why wait until your intonation is perfect? Imagine how wonderful it would be to be able to converse with a French speaker at any stage of your learning. If you were riding a bicycle, you would want to get the basic balance and flow first. Only later would you focus on doing top-speed maneuvers in and out of traffic on a busy street. Your key to quick progress is simply to enjoy speaking and to ‘become’ French as you repeat the words.

Whenever a native speaker corrects you, consider yourself fortunate. Listen to their correction, try it their way and be grateful. Always continue the conversation if the native speaker permits you to. Most people will not correct you, so consider the person who corrects your language an esteemed ally.

Practice Having Real Conversations

Always give yourself the right to practice – even if people laugh at you. Your learning will flourish if you allow yourself the freedom to be imperfect. Like a young child, enjoy the process. Laugh with the native speaker, enjoy the conversation and launch yourself on the trajectory to fluency.

Powell Janulus loved to talk. On one occasion at a restaurant, we watched him chat with a Hungarian waiter, a Turkish doorman and a Japanese member of our party. His conversation style was light and relaxed as he playfully joked with each in their individual languages. “Never waste a good opportunity to practice,” he said, “I hardly ever get to speak Hungarian!” Each time, he followed the same procedure; he would open with a simple question, pay eager attention and repeat the phrases or make requests using gestures and a few words. Then, while maintaining strong interest, he would slowly expand the conversation bit by bit.

Emotions Connect Confidence: One of the disadvantages of learning a language after the age of 11

is that most people learn in an emotionally dry, information-only manner. This often leads to a very flat experience of the second language. The new language is not connected to any natural emotions and passions in their lives. As a result, people don’t enjoy speaking the new language much and prefer to return back to their first language and culture. This can be very challenging for immigrants to

a new country. Talking about your passions builds the bridge between your new language and the joys of your life. And learning through games, parties, friendships and relaxed conversations builds this positive emotional connection to the new language even more. This is at the heart of all Velocity methods. When you speak from passion, even if you don’t know all the right words, your natural confidence shines through.

Emotional Range

It is important to become relaxed and comfortable with a wide range of emotional and expressive thoughts in your new language. This is all about long-term enjoyment and confidence. If feeling joy in the new language has been difficult, you may want to practice this exercise regularly. As you continue to talk about your life expressively in the new language, it will become easier and easier to feel a full range of emotions in your new language. Your new language will become vibrant and alive for you.

With practice, you will find it easier to become much more expressive and comfortable describing your emotions in the new language, thus touching the heart of emotional intelligence. Most important of all, you will enjoy speaking, and your confidence will carry the communication.

Joy of Speaking: Velocity learning is based on the principle of ‘Joy of Speaking.’ We aim to bring back into the learning process the enjoyment of language that you had as a young child. Relaxed enjoyment connects everything. By practicing the Velocity way, you actively keep learning to enjoy your new language. Learn to speak the words with lots of feeling and amplifying your positive emotions as you do so. People love speaking their first language. What if you enjoyed speaking your new language even more that you enjoy your first language? Can you see that success would become automatic?

We need to build positive emotion into our day. If the words we speak each day do not resonate, your new language experience may become flat and dry. Speaking a sentence is like riding a roller coaster.

The very sounds and words are full of the hills, valleys, bumps and curves that create a full sensory experience. When you are relaxed and enjoying yourself, as you are while speaking your mother tongue, a positive vibe is built into the experience. We simply need to transfer this feeling into our new language experience.

Link Your Body to Confidence: Confidence is something that you feel in your body. To feel confidence, start with your body. The great language learner, Powell Janulus, demonstrated again and again the power of linking. He had a specific posture he would step into for each language. For example, once Powell was working with Finnish. It was a particularly difficult language for him to learn. We watched him build a ‘Finnish posture and gesture’ system that included a taller stance, his head up, specific and refined hand pointing postures and a high breathing pattern. This was all very different from the postures and gestures he used with his Italian language system. With Italian, his

body was more crouched, with both hands open in front and moving actively. Speaking Italian, he used open tones, rolling sounds and bigger gestures. Powell optimized these postures into each of the

‘gears’ of all of his 42 languages. He consistently used these postures and gestures as an organized reference system. In this way, his postures linked him to each language. He had fun moving from language to language using this method and never got them mixed up. For him, language was like acting; he changed postures as he changed roles.

One More Trick. Confidence is Speed. Here is the Rule:

Slow is smooth – Smooth is fast

What does this mean? If you try to go too fast, you will make a mess. Start very slowly in the beginning. This is the magic of Intoning. We slow everything right down to a snail’s pace. Next get smooth. This will happen quickly once you find the rhythm of the mouth sounds and start to spend time in the Encharts every day. Now you are ready to go fast. Once you really get the feel of the new language, you will be able to talk quickly, just like a native speaker. Practice from the beginning and your confidence will build.

Why is Speed so Effective at Building Confidence? Your ability to perform complex tongue movements quickly puts you in the ‘range’ of a native speaker – a superb martial artist with their native language. The artistry of native speakers is in their tongue and tone. You quickly develop this artistry with Enchart practice.

All Anchors, such as postures, gestures, tongue movements and tone, can quickly become integrated.

The key to confidence is range of speed. When you have built speed, you can quickly develop the confidence to proceed in building all of the other integrated capabilities including fluency and ease of flow.

Powell’s Spinning Hand:

This is a wonderful secret that Powell Janulus discovered: Spinning the hand speeds the mouth. The mouth and hand are connected. Imagine Powell Janulus learning a group of questions with one of his Encharts, perhaps while speaking to a young international student.

He picks one modal operator such as the verb ‘like’ and a set of interchangeable active sentence objectives. He chooses a set of four verbs, for example: ‘talking,’ ‘learning,’ ‘thinking’ and ‘playing.’

He then links his mouth movement to his left hand and moves his left hand like a metronome: first slowly, then quickly. Looking at his Enchart, he starts his mouth movement. He mouths the words clearly, getting both the rhythm and articulation working. “Do you like talking in the hall?” Then another question: “Do you like talking in the cafés? ... the park? ... the street?” Each time, he speaks the whole sentence clearly and rhythmically.

Once confident of his phrasing, he speaks faster and faster until he can speak the variations with smooth articulation at high speed, varying only the final nouns, until the phrasing is smooth. Then he begins again with a new verb and again gradually speeds the mouth movements. In practicing with his Encharts, Powell always spun his hand in time with the words. When he began to work with a new sentence, he began by spinning his hand slowly. As he got the feel of the sentence or language distinction, he spun his hand faster and faster. This coordinated movement Anchored confidence and speed to his body. The spinning hand was used to speed the mouth and tone as the tongue and hand moved as one. Using this technique, tongue movement quickly became smooth. Smooth tongue movement builds confidence. He then felt comfortable and confident enough to speak his new language at a much slower speed at the next opportunity.

By practicing tongue movement as Powell Janulus did, you can quickly learn the new language

‘tongue dance.’ You will be rewiring the brain to develop a strong linkage system between mouth movements (articulation), ideas (images) and relaxed physical tones, gestures, breathing and stance.

Trust You Habits

Our aim is to build all these connections as quickly and successfully as possible – the same way that a musician practices scales. We link every mouth movement to a rhythm. We link every sentence structure to the visual flow of the Enchart and then practice speeding up, sentence by sentence. We link it all to the positive pleasure of conversing with a native speaker.

Brain and Body: We combine key brain centers together as we link visualization to articulation to posture, movement, tone and meaning. The new brain connections are quickly created, practiced and connected into a permanent, brain-linked, habitual system. You learned other ways to do this in Chapter 10, which included singing the words, dancing the words, drumming with the words and skipping with the words. As children know, all of these methods work well. Singing as you drive your car also builds connections – if you are willing to build brisk mouth-moving behaviors into your driving routine.

Mind the Gap: You may notice a slight hesitation or gap when you start to speak in your new language. Your intuitive mind pauses to figure out how to get the next sentence rolling. Keep practicing speed, and this gap will shorten. Relax and visualize your ideas; the pressure will lighten.

Get into the language gear with the simplest phrases until more words begin to emerge.

Remember ‘to do’ Confidence

How do you get fluent enough to be confident? First stop and flip this idea around. Confidence is something that you DO, not something you GET. If you are waiting to acquire external evidence first and THEN be confident, you may be waiting a long time. It is easy to find fourth-year Mandarin

students in university programs who still won’t dare to speak Chinese with a native speaker.

Confidence is something that you DO. You see a chance, you open your mouth and you start speaking your new language.

Fear is a Lack of Action: The simplest way to overcome fear is to get in action. Speak in your new language Every Day. Speak to strangers when ever you can. Confidence will become a habit.

Would You Eat Them in a Box? One of the great English confidence building tools is the children’s book ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ by Dr. Seuss. This book truly demonstrates the power of speed for building confidence. This crazy, rhyming text has been used by millions of English children to amplify their fluency through speed. Try it now. Start slow and smooth, then go faster and faster. It may seem like a silly exercise, but speed is the one of very most effective ways to build confidence.

Try it to this Excerpt from the Book:

Would you eat them in a box?

Would you eat them with a fox?

Not in a box.

Not with a fox.

Not in a house.

Not with a mouse.

I would not eat them here or there.

I would not eat them anywhere.

I would not eat green eggs and ham.

I do not like them, Sam-I-am.

12 Every Day

*****************

“Everything we make must first pass the toothbrush test: You have to automatically use it at least twice every day, without thinking, just like a toothbrush.”

– Larry Page, Co-founder, Google

Distraction is Your Enemy: Success suddenly seems achievable. Do not underestimate your opponent. Distraction is calling you. Distraction is an ever-present force that wants nothing less than the destruction of your New Language Identity. You cannot win with willpower alone. Success will depend on your ability to build habits that you use every day. If you spend a little time every day, fluency wins. If you don’t revisit your new language Every Day, distraction wins. Choose.

In order to defeat distraction, we must build beginner mastery in the four key areas that will give us

the energy and momentum to ensure success:

Habits

Feedback

Shift

Celebrate

Brain Science has demonstrated that it takes 21 days to make it stick. Repetition is the ‘Do Not Erase’

switch in your brain. We must structure a system to keep our New Language Identity alive until we have evidence that conversational flow is beginning to occur naturally.

Four Quadrant Habits: How can you build habits that will support your long-term success? Consider the Four Quadrants of Learning They illustrate some of the best ways to design your habits for maximum learning impact.

Four Quadrants of Learning:

1 Passive

2 Active

3 Group

4 Social

1 Passive Learning:

Any kind of learning that happens in an automatic or intuitive way is Passive Learning. It can range from watching TV in your new language to total immersion in your new language culture. It is important to build up your total exposure to your new language, and Passive Solo Learning is a good way to do it.

However, be careful. There is a popular myth that total immersion is the best way to learn. This is true if all of the other learning quadrants are active, but this is rarely the case. Immersion alone will not give you the structure of the language. Immersion alone will not give you the power of the Velocity system. If you are watching TV in your new language, the words will slip past your brain unless they are at your learning level. Start with ‘Dora the Explorer’ on YouTube before you graduate to TED.com talks with subtitles. Also, try to remember to ‘warm up your ears’ with a little Intoning.

This will accelerate Passive Learning.

2 Active Learning:

You simply must spend some time Every Day working ‘on your own’ to keep your learning active.

Solo Active Learning includes anything you do by yourself. Some of the very best Solo Active

methods range from daily Intoning to speaking in full sentences from Encharts. However, do not underestimate the learning power of building your own materials. Creating your own Encharts and Intoning word lists is a key activity that lets you take ownership of your process. Building Enchart conversations about the things in life that you are most passionate about is another key way to build motivation.

Make it Fun: The danger of Solo Active Learning, learning on your own, is the old habit of

‘homework.’ Most humans have strong traditional education habits. You tell yourself you MUST do it in order to be a GOOD person and suddenly the learning seems HARD. This is because you have triggered a very old homework pattern that is strongly wired into your brain. Language learning is like eating ice cream. If it’s hard, you are doing it wrong. Your job is to find a way to make language learning the BEST part of your day. Find a way to PLAY Every Day.

3 Group Learning:

A group can be two people. Any kind of practice that you do with another person will warm up your Group Learning brain. Communication requires other people, so this is the best place to warm up your conversation brain. Let the magic of rapport pull you into a conversational flow. Any kind of pretend conversation will get this going. Start with small interactions and conversations. Use the tools, ideas and simple games in this book to access the power of fun, relaxed conversations. You will naturally absorb the language and begin to quickly build confidence.

Group Active Learning is the secret weapon of this book. Any kind of team language activity is the very fastest way to warm up your new language brain. Add in silly hats, fun games and melodramatic acting for maximum impact. Call up your friends and plan your first Velocity party. Start a Velocity Chapter in your town. Building an effective language learning team, group or community is the key to success.

Group Feedback: If you regularly practice with other learners of your new language, the group feedback sequence is a great tool. Take it to the group, and show them the power of enjoying mistakes and creating positive ‘obsessions.’ Get agreements with your language-learning partners to make it safe to make mistakes.

4 Social Learning: What is Social Learning? Social Learning is any activity in which you publicly express your new language. As you develop your New Language Identity, there is one rule: Share it to Make it Stronger

The more you share yourself in a public way, the stronger you will become in your new language.

Now I speak German

Spezeck, from Poland, went to a dinner party on Sunday after the 2-day Velocity Learning workshop.

His friends asked him about his weekend, and he started to tell them. Suddenly he realized that he HAD to take this moment to share his new German identity. He proudly stated, “Now I speak German!” One of his skeptical friends immediately challenged him to speak in German. He had just spent all afternoon having Enchart conversations so, without hesitation, he launched into German. He said, “In that moment, everything seemed to change. I knew I could do it.”

Dare to Share: In order to break the language barrier, you simply MUST share your New Language Identity. If you are worried or embarrassed, you can start off slow and share with a close friend.

We learn best when we include and balance all four of these learning quadrants on a regular basis.

Balance is the key to speed. In order to achieve velocity, balance the four quadrants of practice!

Doing some practice in all four of the quadrants throughout your week, or even every other day, creates truly effective language learning.

Every Day Habits:

Time: Think about time. How do you spend your language learning time? What are your time and energy habits? How can you build strong time habits and use them to your advantage? It is not that you have to become a robot. Rather, notice what works well for you and turn this into a system.

Do You Sprint? Sprinting is when you get excited and take a deep dive into your new language.

Sprinting is powerful, but it can be hard to sustain. If you love to sprint, how can you turn it into a long-term practice?

Same Time, Every Day: This is a key practice for people who like structure. Set up a routine that runs on a 24-hour cycle. Find a natural time and begin to build your habits Every Day.

Learning a new language is like brushing your teeth; you

have to do it twice a day

Random Times: Many people prefer to work in a less structured way. If this is the case for you, you will have to use some more creative ways to keep your ‘everyday’ habits in existence.

Learning Interruptions: How can you build learning interruptions into your time and physical space? Set up tiny language learning breaks that happen several times per day. You can use a location or activity to trigger your language learning interruption. You will find more examples below.

Location: Physical space is a very effective Anchor for your learning state. If you study consistently, set up a desk or learning corner. The more time you spend in a relaxed learning state, the more you will wire this state into this space. Simply putting your body into this environment will turn

on your Velocity learning mode.

Never Waste a Pee: We need to make a special mention of the bathroom. You are required by nature to visit this location at regular intervals. This creates an ideal system for spaced repetition of learning interruptions. We also need to mention the mirror. This is a device in which you ‘see yourself’. It seems kind of obvious that this is the ideal location to put your New Language Identity Profile. Fill the edges of your mirror with identity profile Post-it notes. You brush your teeth twice a day. Use this time to envision ‘who you are becoming’ in your new language.

Do it in a Car: If you commute, your car is an outstanding learning Anchor. Play a Velocity word list on your car stereo. A car is an ideal place for Intoning. Try speaking five sentences from an Enchart at each red light. At the very simplest level, you can put a tiny New Language Identity profile on your dashboard. Do not brush past it. Take a moment during each drive to reflect on who you wish to become in your new language.

Dive into Visual Immersion: Putting up posters, Post-it notes, Encharts and word lists around your home or work space is another great passive immersion booster. Here is a quest. Label 100 objects in your home with their new language translation. Start with simple WHAT objects like ‘cup’ or ‘door.’

Later, graduate to simple sentences such as, “I drink from a cup” or “‘I walk through a door.” Say the phrase to yourself, each time you take the action.

Commit to Activity Triggers

Think about the things you do Every Day when you have vacant brain space such as walking, waiting in line, going to the bathroom, taking transit, cooking, or commuting. How can you work the Velocity approach into your unused brain space? Most people have a lot of spare room in their audio channel.

Rather than listen to music, listen to Intoning words, and silently speak along with the words. Where do you spend time waiting? The first time you go through a mini Enchart conversation on 4x6 cards while waiting in a bank lineup, you may feel a bit odd. However, after you do it a few more times, you will start to build a habit.

Build an Accountability Structure: You have to commit and tell a friend: “I will practice my Enchart conversations Every Day on the bus. After one week, please ask me how it is going.” Once you say that to a trusted friend, everything will change. Try it.

The Reward System: When we are learning anything new, our brain has a built-in Reward System for success.

As we encounter a new language idea, our brain creates a mind map of that concept. Eventually, over time, complexity becomes simplicity as we intuitively fit the concepts into our overall understanding.

Confidence grows; therefore, we intuitively celebrate our small successes and begin to enjoy the process of learning. Enjoyment engages the Reward System, which links into our long-term value for

learning the language.

The Reactive System: In direct contrast to the Reward System, in which we are trying to formulate a sentence and we discover that we have made an error, the brain’s Reactive System automatically engages. Add in a little stress from the challenge of dealing with all these new ideas, and the situation gets worse. The Reactive System takes control.

When the Reactive System is in control, all real learning stops.

The Reactive System can only think in yes or no. We are either 100% correct or 100% wrong.

Unfortunately, as a learning system, the Reactive System is very limited and inflexible.

Never Touch Fire: Here is an example of the rule based thinking of the Reactive System: Touch a flame and you get burned. This creates a rule in your mind: NEVER touch a flame. The Reactive System uses ‘black or white’ rule-based thinking. There are no grey areas in the Reactive System.

This kind of thinking sabotages the complexity of language learning. The only kind of learning the Reactive System can provide is to avoid language learning or any difficult area – such as specific grammar ‘areas’ of the new language – altogether. Learning a new language is a process of making lots of mistakes. Your reactive system will avoid this.

Test Your Reactive System:

Is there any part of your new language learning that you are avoiding?

If so, then you can be sure your Reactive System has taken control.

Monitor your Internal Dialogue. Do you ever hear something like this:

“I hate conjugating verbs...”

or “I just can’t do this part...”

This kind of Internal Dialogue is a sure sign that the Reactive System has taken control. You need to quickly relax and shift back into learning mode. There are ways to do this.

Steps to Turning Off the Reactive System: Once you recognize the symptoms of your Reactive System, you have to get yourself back into the play, explore and enjoy mode as quickly as possible to trigger the Reward System. To do this, you must find a method to turn any error into a positive enjoyable experience and as quickly as possible. The faster you can re-engage the Reward System to counteract any damage done by the Reactive System, the easier it is to get rid of negative responses.

Powell and Halipov were masters at staying in the enjoying, exploring and learning mode. They conditioned themselves to instantly switch back into the Reward System, and they continuously

integrated Positive Feedback by using the Reward System.

Halipov’s technique was to treat the whole learning process as a hobby that he could take lightly. “I will figure this one out tomorrow,” he would say – and he did! Every Day, he would lightly enjoy his step-by-step learning process.

There are no mistakes, only better learning

Imagine building a series of language maps that scale from very simple to very detailed. They would cover all the basic word learning requirements to speak your new language effectively. In the beginning, the maps would, by nature, have huge simplifications of the language. If you make a simple set of Encharts using this process, some sentences would naturally have errors. Not a problem. When you are ready, you would add in the next level of detail. Errors are simply the next level of detail.

Why we Brain Freeze: You cannot drive a car in forward and reverse gears at the same time. The difficulty is that learning and error correction require two very different brain responses. In 2002, a study of Language Learning systematically introduced grammar errors to people studying a new language, uing MRI scanning. As the increased the errors, they found that activity in the brain area associated with learning decreased, while activity in the area of the brain associated with stress response increased as participants tried to process the grammar errors. This is a paradox of language learning. We need a relaxed and playful attitude in order to learn, but we also need error correction which kills our relaxed and playful learning system. There is a solution: ‘Love making mistakes.’

For Powell, when he discovered an ‘error,’ he would get excited and his enjoyment level would dramatically increase. He had conditioned himself with the concept of “errors = more learning =

more fun.”

Learning Feedback: How do you know if you are making progress in your language learning adventure? Are you making progress and moving forward, or are you slipping backward?

Your ability to assess this is dependent on how you measure success and how you take in feedback.

Are you noticing the small steps that build success, or do you have an unrealistic expectation of instant success? Are you open to learning feedback, or does everything seem like a personal attack?

Who are you taking feedback from? Do you have a supportive group and community committed to your success? Or are you taking feedback from some critical characters who don’t believe you will succeed? The most dangerous source of feedback is closer to home: your Internal Dialogue.

Getting useful feedback means that you more easily celebrate your joint achievements. The more you celebrate, the more you relax and really learn together. Here are some ideas you might share with your friends and fellow language learners so that you do get good feedback.

Strong Language Learners:

From her studies of polyglots from around the world, Marilyn Atkinson observed many similar patterns. She documented that:

Strong Language Learners Have:

- a clear vision of themselves as competent speakers

- a daily methodology – to build creative habits for learning

- a taste for ‘eating the dinosaur bite by bite’

- ability to find pleasure in small gradual achievements

- ability to take each step separately within a large plan

- ability to grab random opportunities to make the process fun

- ability to reach out and grab ‘shining moments of engagement’

Strong Language Learners:

- keep motivation high with ‘the future’ imaging

- reward themselves with recognition for each step along the way

- use tools to ensure and further mastery – a day at a time

- realize fun and expressive enjoyment is a powerful motivator

- seek out pleasure every day in speaking their new language

Strong language learners take action to:

- decide on the goals they want to achieve

- make sure what they want is within their personal control

- determine if this goal fits in with their other goals

- publicly state their goals as specific steps:

e.g. “I plan to know 100 new phrases in 2 weeks from today.”

Strong Language Learners Apply a SMARRT Framework:

Specific – make you learning goals specific

Measurable – make your goals easily measurable

Achievable – ensure your goals are achievable

Relevant – make your goals relevant to your life

Realistic – make your goals optimistically realistic

Timeline – plan out the beginning, middle and end Master the Skill of Positive Feedback: Do you use a Positive Feedback sequence, or a failure sequence? When we hear what seems like a mistake, we habitually go to either the failure or feedback sequence, as described herein. This is an old habit, which most people develop before the age of five. The failure sequence often disables learning, so you may want to shift your habit. Develop the Positive Feedback sequence to give yourself the maximum positive reward possible.

Ask People for Feedback – All the Time: With language learning, it is possible to find native speakers who are willing to correct you, in both pronunciation and usage. However, the sad fact is that the majority of native speakers will not think to correct you.

You may need to actively request feedback. People are sometimes habituated to being polite, and it doesn’t really occur to them to correct you. Unfortunately, without their correction, you could learn poor usage.

If possible, find honest listeners who tell you what sentence structures work well. Find people who are willing to correct your new language usage. Ask them to please tell you the right way to say it!

Without a system for self-correction, you could learn poor usage and then need to ‘unlearn’ and

‘relearn’ a whole area of speech after you become aware of your error. The Velocity System is here to help you with this.

Take the time to connect with potential friends who are willing to serve you in a positive way.

Celebrate the feedback they give you, and enjoy relaxing and talking with them. A native speaker who will assist you to practice learning on a regular basis is a highly prized friend. Even a non-native speaker who will practice with you consistently can make a big difference to your speed of learning.

Celebrate Each Success

Learn to appreciate tiny steps: Although this may seem VERY simplistic, learning to appreciate the tiny steps is what separates the power learners like Powell Janulus from most other people. This is simply a thinking habit. You have to take a moment to notice and appreciate the tiny steps you are taking. In the Velocity workshops, we build an implementation checklist of tiny and very easy steps.

These are fun and silly quests and achievements that build momentum. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to tell one friend about your New Language Identity, and after you have done it once, it will get much easier. After you do this and check it off your list, it will give you energy for things like Intoning three times on three days. Build your checklist.

Embrace the concept of progress. Learning a new language is a big project. It is important to keep yourself energized and motivated. Don’t worry about the end result; just get comfortable with the idea of playing Every Day and making some progress. Make a little progress Every Day and celebrate

each step. With the traditional language learning approach, it can be difficult to enjoy the learning process because there is a logjam of learning all at once: vocabulary, sentence structure, verbs, grammar and pronunciation. You may find yourself overwhelmed by too much information and not be able to see your progress. The Velocity way is meant to be easy. If you become frustrated, STOP, and shift your focus.

Shift into Positive Gear: Negative Internal Dialogue is the fastest way to sink your ship.

Negative self-talk can also be very sticky, so you need to catch it before it builds momentum. This is a small old habit that is actually easy to shift. Learn to catch yourself and shift to the positive. This book is full of tools, strategies and positive messages that can easily be turned into success habits.

Ask yourself one question: What language is your negative Internal Dialogue speaking? Almost guaranteed, your negative Internal Dialogue speaks in your first language, the language you learned as a 5-year-old child. As such, your negative Internal Dialogue has no place in your new language universe. Only accept self-feedback in your new language. The only self-judgment that could ever be valid consists of positive words and phrases in your new language. These are some of the first words and phrases you want to learn. Learn them now and build a habit to say them to yourself Every Day.

See it to be it

Shift Every Day

Language learning is a daily challenge. You will be required to ‘shift the negative’ time and time again. Occasionally, it may seem like you are stuck in old language learning rejection habits, and you may find yourself thinking that you are not making any progress. Of course, these occasional negative thoughts don’t actually reflect the real truth. We all have had the experience that we are natural learning machines, and that the language-learning is an natural human function. Your logical mind may accept this idea, but occasionally difficulties pop up that appear to be very real. You may even have what you feel is concrete evidence of negative difficulties.

To make your Velocity Accelerated Learning practices sustainable over the long-term, you will need to learn how to shift your thoughts from the negative back to the positive. Fortunately, you already know how to do this. You have been doing this all your life. You typically repeat this process hundreds of times a day. Anytime you want anything, you shift your thoughts into the positive. You can’t get a cup of coffee in the morning without wanting it first. Why else would a caffeine addict get out of bed? Your motivation for everything you want in life is your starting point to get what you want.

Our job in this chapter is to make you become much more aware of your existing process for shifting

from negative to positive thought patterns. Once you become aware, you can take that existing ability and enhance the skill. But first, you will need to strengthen the ability to ‘catch and recognize’ when you are in the negative so that you can shift out

of that mode.

Your Internal Dialogue System: Internal Dialogue is playing in the background of your mind from the moment you wake up until the moment you drift off to sleep at night. Here is the bad news – you can’t turn it off. Go ahead and try! Most people tend to ‘become’ their Internal Dialogue, not noticing that it is just a system of habitual, internal tape recordings on a continual loop.

If you can’t turn off Internal Dialogue, you must learn to use it to your advantage.

If you don’t take charge of your inner mind chatter, your Internal Dialogue will manipulate you. In this case, you might easily drift on the moods and messages it habitually sends to you – like a balloon caught in a windstorm. Learn to use your Internal Dialogue to remind yourself of how successful you are at positive thoughts that motivate you to success.

Four Ways to Stop Yourself

Most humans will stop their language learning process in one of the four following ways: 1 Hard: You keep telling yourself that learning the new language is hard, until you believe that this is ‘true’ and then you give up. This is a pattern. Catch the pattern and then shift to easy.

2 No Time: You keep telling yourself that you have ‘NO Time’ to play with your new language.

You find evidence that there is a lack of time in your life. You avoid building the motivation and

‘instant learning’ habits. Then you give up. This is a pattern. Catch the pattern and create more time.

3 No Results: You keep telling yourself that you are not making progress and it won’t work for you. This is a thought pattern. Catch the pattern and notice the tiny steps you taking each day. Add more appreciation. Do not trust your internal assessment. Get external feedback from your trusted learning community.

4 Embarrassing: You keep avoiding situations where you might have a chance to speak your new language. You ‘pull back’ from the intensity of emotion. This is a pattern. Catch the pattern and regenerate ‘Love Making Mistakes.’ Put on your silly hat.

Notice which pattern you would use to stop yourself. Stage an ambush. Set up a positive habit to interrupt the negative pattern. Do this in the beginning so you have the overwhelming momentum of positive habits to push through the negative. The principle of overwhelming force is key to military strategy. You want 10 times the positive energy so that you can burst through the negative pattern.

The Practice of Positive Learning: We have said that the process of ongoing positive learning

requires some attention Every Day. The shifting process becomes a source of motivation. Notice success and add an upbeat tone of warm self-appreciation. You will build positive Internal Dialogue.

If you build this habit, you will receive extraordinary payoffs that go far beyond the value of language learning. This shift gathers momentum. Building positive Internal Dialogue provides fuel for you in all areas of life.

Positive Internal Dialogue - In your new language:

At any point, you can ask: ‘what language is my Internal Dialogue is speaking?’ You can then switch to upbeat positive messages in your new language. You can link these messages to the Value Words you are building and to the successes you are creating. Now go back and add some Value Words to your New Language Identity. Express those Value Words. Feel them increase your energy.

Learn to SHIFT: The important thing is to shift both the tone and the words of your inner messages.

Make your positive new messages specific, value-oriented and achievable. As well, make them particularly kind to yourself. Really notice that you deserve some extra appreciation for what you are doing!

Some people have a thousand reasons why they cannot get what they want. To be successful, simply come up with a thousand reasons why you can!

Easy = Relaxation = Learning

The visualization area of your Cerebral Coretex provides an incredible system for easy learning.

With relaxation, we are able to open our minds up to power of visualization. If your mind thinks of the process as ‘easy,’ you relax and let down the barriers. If your mind thinks of the process as

‘difficult’, you immediately tense up and put up barriers to new ideas.

The concept of ‘easy’ is powerful. Recent research shows that advanced language learners emphasize the word ‘easy’ over and over in their learning. With easy language learning, you are building a whole new habit system for learning success in multiple areas of your life!

Appreciate your success. Be satisfied with your small achievements. Before you know it, you will have adopted the patterns that will quickly bring you to easy conversational fluency. However, the result is not the point. The point is that getting there was easy. Making it easy is always more important than the result. The essence of easy is the enjoyment you feel playing the game. If you can keep doing this, it will become a habit.

Easy Becomes Effortless:

Amplify easy to create effortless!

Keep ‘feeling’ that language learning is easy!

Keep generating the easy state of being!

Intuitively move from easy to effortless!

Powell Consistently Created Easy: ‘Easy’ goes hand in hand with consistency. Powell Janulus was consistent in his practice and his main practice was believing that learning the new language was easy. Once Powell started with a new language, it was an ongoing project. He didn’t stop. His Encharting led to question after question and the emergence of Enchart after Enchart! When he talked about his ability, he would address all and any who were interested: “You can do it too! I’m not special.” He resisted people’s efforts to call him a genius: “They don’t notice how all my simple actions simply add up,” he said.

Can Anything Actually be Effortless? You get to declare how effortless the learning process will be – to yourself and to others. You choose what to put your attention on and then you amplify it. As you build success, you can take on even bigger challenges. Easy offers you a pathway to effortlessly step up to any challenge.

Effortless is the master game. Going from ‘easy’ to ‘effortless,’ we relax, and the learning becomes natural. At some point easy becomes a natural way of being. You just don’t even have to think about it. Everything is easy. This how we know that we have stepped into effortless.

Completion is Calling You

Let’s Speak about the Paradox of Easy, Effortless and Done.

Language fluency is never done! You will always be learning. However, if you are consistent in your daily practice you will find that mastery is in the wind. Mastery is only a matter of mindset.

You Commit and Declare Done Now: This takes discipline and focus. However, if you can consistently take the action that goes with your commitment, you will experience the power of ‘Done’.

You simply know that the result is going to happen, because it already HAS happened. It is done.

Keep in mind that you are simply mastering a state of being. If you keep moving forward and remember to enjoy the process, the world will begin to agree with you. If you operate from this state consistently, your focus and discipline will bend time and space, until the future you are creating becomes now. This is the game of mastery.

Language learning is best approached as a game – a game worth playing because it develops your mind and being in multifold ways. Create

your own game. Call it easy. Call it fun. Play your game as if your life depends on it.

Seek, above all, for a game worth playing.

Having found the game, play it as if your life depends on it.

Flourish a banner bearing the word ‘engagement.’

If life does not seem to offer a game worth playing, then invent one. Any game is better than no game.

The Master Game, Robert S. de Ropp, 1950

Easy

What is easy?

Easy is a state of mind.

Easy is a positive mental attitude.

Easy is a frame of reference.

Easy is a way of being

Glossary of Velocity Language:

3x3: Repeated exposure 3 times on 3 days

4x4: Enchart grid with 16 words

Active Learning: Intensive practice and play

Anchor: To link in the brain, Associations, NLP

Auditory: Sound brain processing, NLP

Become: Process of identifying as a native speaker

Body Learning: Movement based practice and play

Brain Freeze: Block in memory stopping speech

Brent Cameron: WonderTree Learning

Business Identity: How you wish to be seen in public

Cerebral Cortex: Largest brain area, Visual brain

Communication Transaction A moment of understanding

Conditioning: Repeated practice and play

Conversation Arrow: System for dialogue and connection

Emotional Range 142, Expressive acting, Increasing intensity Enchart Skit: Series of Encharts that tell a story

Enchart: A simple sentence construction system

Every Day: Building automatic habits for learning

FRASSI: Word association memory formula

Georgi Lozanov: Bulgarian learning pioneer, Suggestopedia Group Learning: Team growth games

Higher Order: Simple communication needs

Holographic Memory: Broad memory links and associations

Instant Communication: Simple dialogue system

Internal Dialogue: Self-talk, repeated negative messages

Intoning: Rhythm based sound learning

Intuitive Learning: Generalized conditioning

Kinesthetic: Perception of taste, touch, smell, feelings

Languaging: Becoming self aware through words

Logic System: Decisions based on internal dialogue

Logical Levels: Hierarchy of experience, Dilts, NLP

Lower Order: Complex language rules, Grammar

Mapping: Language usage patterns, Grammar

Metaphoric Identity: Fictional new language self

Mirror Words: Similar loan words from another language

Missioning: New language goals and motivation

New Language Identity: Successful fluent future self, Become NLP: Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Personal growth system, Bandler, Grinder Particles: Unknown grammar elements

Passive Learning: Language acquisition through exposure

Positive Feedback: Shared appreciation of success

Reactive System: Reptilian brain, Reticular brain

Reward System: Brain system for positive motivation

Rhythm Learning: Word association based on beat and tempo

Robert Dilts: NLP Author, Logical Levels

Sergei Halipov: Russian Polyglot

Social Learning: Group or public sharing of success

Sticky: Easy to remember

Sticky Words: Silly word-sound-image associations

Suggestopedia: Rhythmic word conditioning, Lazanov Timeline Learning Linking verb tense to time association

Universal Communication Needs: Internal human language organization Value Words: Positive emotion in single words

Visioning: To see a desired future, Visualize

Wheel of Emotions 106, Series of states that increase expression Word Order: Specific word sequence of a language

Word Types: Communication need word categories

About Velocity: Velocity is a global community active in more than 30 countries worldwide.

The Velocity network links more than 100,000 people and thousands have participated in Velocity events. Velocity Instant Fluency programs have been conducted in locations that include, Russia, Indonesia, Turkey, Korea and China. Around the world Velocity Chapters meet each week and more are starting everyday. Become a champion of Velocity and create your community.

Velocity offers intensive training programs, ongoing weekly programs and an active support community. Velocity also offers games, apps, videos, workbooks and lots of other support materials. Velocity programs range from DIY study groups through to Fortune 500

corporate transformation programs. However, every Velocity program stays true to the Velocity mindset and approach of Fun, Fast & Easy Language Learning.

Marilyn Atkinson, Ph.D.

Marilyn Atkinson is global authority on human development and accelerated learning. Marilyn first began organized research on rapid language learning in 1985. As the founder of Erickson Coaching International and Co-Founder of Velocity Learning, she now travels globally 300+ days per year in service to her human development mission.

Paul Gossen

Paul Gossen is well known as an author, speaker and global authority in leadership, language and learning. Paul has been a serial entrepreneur for more than 30 years, with successful ventures in software, games and learning. Paul has conducted Fortune 500

transformation projects in Russia, China, Europe and the Middle East. As the CEO and Co-Founder of Velocity Learning, he dedicates his energy and passion to the growth of the language transformation movement worldwide.

Document Outline

Velocity Instant Fluency The History of Velocity 1 Mindset 2 Intuitive 3 Sticky 4 Missioning 5 Intoning 6 Enchart 7.Become 8.Fun 9.People 10 Mapping 11 Confidence 12 Every Day