LingQ: setting goals, meeting targets

When I first joined LingQ my goal was simple but vague: I just wanted to be able to speak Russian. I wasn't sure if I could, so setting that goal was a big deal for me. I wasn't sure whether I was smart enough, how long it would take, how much it would cost, how hard it would be, whether my somewhat chaotic lifestyle could accommodate a long-term learning plan.

A year later, I know better.

Sure I'm smart enough! If you can switch on a computer then you have the brains to learn a language. My little boy can do both and he's still in nappies.

It needn't cost anything. LingQ is about people helping each other to learn. You don't even have to buy Steve Kaufmann's book.

It takes (give or take) 1 000 hours to become fluent in a language.

It's actually pretty easy, unless you try and make it hard. You just listen to stuff and read stuff and then you realise you have learned some new words.

As for my freeform lifestyle, I have a computer in my living room, an MP3 player in my pocket and an eBook reader in my handbag. Whenever I have a spare 10 minutes when my ears, eyeballs or fingers aren't being used for something else, I can do some reading or some listening or some vocabulary reviewing. Although I have very little quality time to spare, I have two or three hours a day of spare odd minutes, on the bus, at the school gate, eating breakfast or having a bath. It doesn't matter whether you do more listening than reading, or more reading than reviewing vocabulary. It all goes into your brain, and your brain joins it all together while you are thinking about something quite different. (I've started dreaming in Kanji, now that's weird!)

If you cast your eyeballs to the column on the right you will see that I'm now working on 5 languages at once. My goal is to become proficient enough at each that I can read a newspaper, listen to a radio show, watch a TV documentary. I figure that's about 40 000 known words and 1 000 hours study per language, and as you can see I'm getting there. It might take a couple of years, it might take a bit longer (I quite fancy Arabic and Spanish too). But I know I can do it, I can afford to do it, and it's fun. I also know a lot of people who have done it before me.

LingQ: because we can't ALL be crazy!