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Super rapid technique to become fluent in a new language

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Here's my dilemma: I need to learn fluent Spanish really fast, in a month. I'm going to be chief pilot on an 18 country humanitarian flight through Latin America and none of us speak Spanish. Not yet.

 I've been going through various Spanish courses, trial and error to figure out most effective way to learn. There is big money behind learning languages, so of course there is a lot of crap out there. I finally came across what I believe is the fastest most effective technique.

2 categories of language instructions

  1. Course based (sequential, building blocks, repeat previous material in new block)
  2. Somewhat random (throw nouns and verbs and phrases in, no real course outline)
(1) is much harder to implement so lots of the online stuff is (2). Avoid (2) at all costs, human brain does not learn well without a sequential course.

2 types of course based products

  1. The ones people like 
  2. The ones that are actually effective in teaching
This may seem obvious, but important to understand this. if you're building a new language product, do you tailor it towards getting high ratings and 5* reviews in the app store? Many companies do. Dualingo is one such popular product and I believe it's mostly worthless. Stay away from this. It's really fun and there are points systems and it does a very good job of making you FEEL like you're making progress, but try speaking the language with a native speaker, this is the real test. Good luck, you're going to be very lost.

Pimsleur's course

I discovered professor Pimsleur's course. It's entirely audio based and it's designed based on scientific understanding of how humans learn. A few very key points about it:
  • You put headphones on and listen and speak for 30 minutes. Interesting side effect. It's like meditation - total immersion. Not only do you completely any distractions which are biggest obstacle to learning, you will actually stop thinking about all your other silly life problems (like hunger, relationships, stress). Apps like dualingo are highly distracting.
  • Very important before your first Pimsleur lesson,, listen to the 'how this course works" 10 minute intro. They explain the science behind and instructions on how to use the material.
  • Most important points: Do only 30 minute a day (do not cram 2 sessions into 1 day), and speak out loud when asked to, do not skip this (the muscle memory is very important, just thinking about it is not the same at all). You can repeat the same course twice in one day.

Pimsleur vs live tutor

I believe Pimsleur course is more effective than a live tutor in some ways because it's extremely well structured. A human tutor without  solid course tends to jump around too much and is not good at bringing back material from last session to the new one. I am personally doing a combination of both - live tutor and pimsleur.

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