About Gabe Arroyo

The Living in a Language method is a modern guide to learning a new language.

We have all tried to learn a foreign language at some point in our lives and failed.
In many cases, we come up with several reasons why we have failed: the process, the plan, the program, the teacher, lack of time, too difficult of a language, etc.
Here's the thing: we are all good at learning languages. The problem is the approach in which you take. You cannot speak any language while thinking in your native language. You can't translate languages either.  This system will help you get to a level of fluency where you don't have to look for words or phrases; there will be no more pausing, no more translating, no more asking people to speak slowly or repeat, and no more anything but fluency.

You just speak the language. This system allows you to learn one or as many languages simultaneously as you want. The reason for this is because you learn to live in a language to fluency. With each language, think of it as it's own country. You pick a language and you live in it. That's all. To learn how to do this, it is not necessary that you  move to China to learn Chinese, BUT YOU HAVE TO LIVE IN THE IN MANDARIN CHINESE. I WILL TEACH YOU HOW.

The Living in a Language method is unique, in that it takes on the language learning challenge from a natural standpoint. It will teach you about how your brain learns, how you can turn actions and daily activity into easily learning pieces, and then easily use the method to remember each and every one of those pieces forever.

And you’ll be able to do it in your spare time - even if you have less than 5-10 minutes a day throughout the day.

A Different Approach to Learning New Languages

Learn to live in the system

NO TRANSLATION

SPEAK NATURALLY AND FLUENTLY WITHOUT THINKING OF WORDS.

My Story and the Development of this Language Learning Method
I began language learning at a very early age. My parents were Hispanic and with my first native tongue being Spanish, I learned English while living in America. I had several deaf friends throughout high school and had a deaf aunt so I was able to learn American Sign Language. My love for the martial arts and the orient and my travels to and from China and Japan has led me to learn Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese. French and Italian were simple to pick up because of my English and Spanish native tongues.

This website provides an overview of my method and the tools I’ve picked up along the way, I am confident that this will help you on your towards fluency.

Allow me to assist you in taking your language learning journey to the level: FLUENT!
If you want to discover more about language learning, my method, join my free Live in a Language email list below and receive the tips and techniques of my book for free.

Imagine Living in a language.

  
Just for a moment, sit back and think about your last language learning experience. Were you in a conversation, feeling doubtful, or feeling that the words couldn't come out? Or maybe you have practiced a bunch of sentences and repeated them several times, yet when in conversation those sentences are nowhere to be found. How about the last time you practiced you sounded fluent, knew exactly what you were going to say the next time you were in front of a native person of your target language, yet to stand in front of a native you only frustrated them or you frustrated yourself because none of the stuff you practiced came out nor anything you said resembled anything in the target language. I ask you these things because they have happened to me. 

You cannot speak any language while thinking in your native language. You can't translate languages either.  This system will help you get to a level of fluency where you don't have to look for words or phrases; there will be no more pausing, no more translating, no more asking people to speak slowly or repeat, and no more anything but fluency. 

You just speak the language. This system allows you to learn one or as many languages simultaneously as you want. The reason for this is because you learn to live in a language to fluency. With each language, think of it as it's own country like in the picture above. You pick a language and you live in it. That's all. To learn how to do this, it is not necessary that for you to live in the country of the target language, BUT YOU HAVE TO LIVE IN THE TARGET LANGUAGE. I WILL TEACH YOU HOW. COMING SOON!!!!

Assimil Review

Assimil Review

Average cost of the method: ~$50-125 for the Book + CDs Edition or MP3

Available in: 10 languages offered for English speakers learning another language, and many more for French and other European language speakers.

Type of method: Dialogues with minor grammatical explanations in footnotes. Audio, entirely in the target language, is included.

Assimil is personally one of my favorite language learning methods, and it’s the favorite one of  many  well-known polyglots.

Although Assimil is not that well-known in North America, it is an extremely popular method in Europe. While it’s probably not the cheapest alternative you can find out there among available language textbooks (roughly $50 to $125 for both the book and CDs), it’s still reasonably priced, and it’s an option seriously worth considering because of the quality and effectiveness of the method. So what is it, how do you use it, and why do I recommend it?

Overview

Assimil is a French company, and the series was created back in 1929 by Alphonse Chérel. The company publishes several different series, but their most widely published one is the “With Ease” series for beginners. This series enables beginners to acquire an average vocabulary of 2,000 to 3,000 words, learn the basic grammar rules, and gain a command of everyday conversation. The “With Ease Series” takes you to Level B2 [high-intermediate] of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages in a few months. The “Advanced” (or “Using”) series is aimed at more advanced learners, and teaches more advanced idiosyncrasies and idioms of the target language.

Assimil is available, on the whole, in more than 100 languages, although if you are a native English speaker you will only be able to purchase the books in 10 different languages. For an exhaustive list of the available languages, please visit this Wikipedia page.

How Does It Work?

Assimil is focused on learning whole sentences, for an organic learning of the grammar. It begins with a long passive phase of only reading and listening, and eventually adds active exercises. The “With Ease” series consist of a coursebook with 100 lessons on average (~4-6 pages/lesson), with the active phase starting on Lesson 50. The “Advanced” series is very similar, except that there is no “passive phase” as in the “With Ease” version. Each lesson includes a short dialogue, getting progressively longer throughout the book, written in the target language, together with a translation after each dialogue, as well as short exercises to test your comprehension.

                                                A page of a lesson from Assimil’s Chinese method.

You are recommended to spend as much time on each lesson as needed and to review them every once in a while. Generally speaking, though, going through one lesson should take you anywhere from one to three days. As you follow through the dialogues, you listen to the audio and read through. The audio does not contain any lengthy explanations in English; it is 100% in the target language.

Good Points

The word “Assimil” comes from assimilation, and as such the method encourages learners to “assimilate” the language, similarly to how you assimilated your mother tongue when you were a child. It’s very intuitive, but at the same time there are helpful explanations about grammatical rules, idioms and other expressions in the footnotes. I’ve personally found this method to work surprisingly well. Here are a few additional reasons I think this method deserves serious consideration:

1.         The strength of Assimil truly lies in the fact that you get to understand how the language works without any lengthy grammatical explanations. The grammatical concepts are presented at you through practical conversations, and you get to read short explanations about these concepts after having actually seen them used in actual conversations, which I think is really important. So if you are the type of person who has been traumatized by long verb tables and endless grammatical rules at school, this might be the exact fit for you. You’ll enjoy learning the language the fun way, without getting a headache.

2.         When it comes to the dialogues, they are usually very practical, and contain words and phrases that you are very likely to use from “Day 1” when starting to speak a language with actual human beings. Since the method also tries to use as little English as possible, it gets you to think in the foreign language as soon as possible.

3.         You learn words from context. Forget about long vocabulary lists to memorize. Assimil has no such thing. Every single word you learn comes from the actual dialogues. Therefore you learn sentences and patterns rather than words taken out of context, and I believe this is another one of Assimil’s strengths.

4.         The lessons are short enough to be studied within an hour (more or less), so they are easily digestible chunks of information. This makes it easier for you to divide your study time and to focus on one step at a time. Also, the passive phase (also known as “First Wave”), in which you only read and listen for the first 50 lessons, followed by the active phase (also known as “Second Wave”), in which exercises are added and reviews of previous lessons are encouraged, is a great idea that improves vocabulary retention and helps solidify learned concept and accelerate conversational fluency in the language.

Learning to speak in another language.

I associate words with numbers in other words see below:

1 yī
2 èr
3 sān
4 sì
5 wǔ
6 liù
7 qī
8 bā
9 jiǔ
10 shí­

notice no English only the target language
say I have to do multiplication then I would write it like this yi X yi = yi, yi x er = er, etc. It is a lot easier to associate numbers with the target language.

Describing pictures

I look at this photo and I say the following:

今天 天气 不错 

jīntiān tiānqì búcuò.

今天 很暖和 ， 阳光 明媚 。

jīntiān hén nuǎn huo, yáng guāng míngmèi.

Then I look at this photo and say:

有人 在 河里 游泳 。

yǒurén zài héli· yóuyǒng.

I keep finding pictures and I describe what I see and what is going on.

How to make your own sentences?

My first learned sentences:
1. 我举手
Wǒ/ jǔ /shǒu (I don't say any of this in English, I point to myself, then I raise my hand/then I look at my hand) 我->point to myself, while I am raising my hand I say 举, while looking at my hand I say 手
2. 他是我的父亲
Tā/Shi/Wǒde/ fùqīn I have a family picture and I point to my father and say 他, then I point to myself and say 我的, then I look at him and say 父亲
3. 她是我的母亲
Tā/Shi/Wǒde/ mǔqīn Same as above
4. 她是我的妹妹
Tā/Shi/Wǒde/ Mèimei Same as above
5. 我是的弟弟
Tā/Shi/Wǒde/ Dìdì Same as above

1. I raised my hand
Wǒ / jǔ / shǒu
2. He my father
Tā / Wǒde / fùqīn
3. She my mother
Tā / Wǒde / mǔqīn
4. She my sister
Tā / Wǒde / Mèimei
5. He My brother
Tā / Wǒde / Dìdì

How long to study a language?

I am realizing that I don't practice for long periods of time. I practice often not long. So the best way to practice is to say the sentences aloud for five or ten minutes at a time several times a day. Take full chunks and say them. This way you understand how the words work together and how to use them correctly.

How to Learn Any language Fast

What I am doing is quite simple:

1. I am looking for words and sentences to explain what I am doing throughout the day.
2. I am trying to associate all my actions with mandarin words.
3. I am associating my feelings, my needs and desires with mandarin words.
4. I walk around with my cell phone to my ear and I act as if I am talking to someone at the same time practicing my mandarin.
5. If I am I just speak what I am doing, If I'm not I think it or use #4.
More to come.

Learn Mandarin Chinese

The way I am approaching this language is by thinking in Mandarin. My techniques involve removing the need to translate. When I have this urge to translate I find it takes way too long to find the Mandarin words and phrases to correspond to its English equivalency. I have to live in Mandarin, more to come.

Language Learning Method

My approach to language learning starts in my ears, then moves to my mouth, then down to my hands and finally stop in my eyes. Not anything new that you haven't heard maybe the order is different but you have heard it before, Flood your ears, parrot or mimic the words, write the words until you can write them without the need of instructions and then read should always be the last part. Because often times when I try to read native materials I get overwhelmed too many words I don't know that leads to my frustration, anger and then I eventually stop. At first, I want to hear as much as I can, then I want to repeat as much as I can, then I want to write as much as I can, then I want to read as much as I can. When I read I combine all of the above except for writing obviously. I read out load, so I hear the sound, say the sound and read the words. Memorization techniques are ok to use. I have explored loci method and several other methods to retain vocabulary. But my opinion on learning words is simple, don't. Take the word commit in English, I will now use it in a sentence. Ready:
I will commit to a relationship
I will commit murder.

Same words, sound the same, look the same but don't mean the same. If you want to memorize something, do it in sentences and then move on to paragraphs. The only language you can be sure of is the languages you have memorized.

Using Glossika GMS

Back to Chinese everyone on the net and all over the world talks about how important "tones," are in the Chinese language. I realized how truly different they are I not only in pitch but also in length, force and stress.

Take this Glossika ZH sentence as an example:
你 包儿里 有 什么
nǐ bāorli yǒu shéme
What do you have in your bag?

From that sentence, I would say that 50% of the sentence is tonal and the rest is atonic.

Tones as I understand them:
First tone : High, short and leveled
Second tone: High, short and rising
Third tone: pitch is somewhere lower than the first two drops and then rises and it's the longest of the 4 tones
Fourth tone: Starts high as then drops rapidly in pitch, losing force at the very end of the sound.

Gabe's a dialogue of Chinese log from Zero - conversational in 6 months

Learning languages has led me to the belief that there aren't any difficult sounds in any language. I figured any sound that is or was hard to pronounce it would either be discarded, removed or would not survive in the language. Thake this English word: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis which is a lung disease, Would you try to say the long word or would you just say lung disease? and which of the two are used most commonly and understood? 

I feel that the difficulty comes from the fact that the way you speak in your native tongue stops you from learning the new language. My opinions on why they stop you are because we all have certain things we say or do and then we want to say or do them exactly in the target language. Things don't translate! Just simply understand that. When you speak in a foreign language, that language has to be native in your mind and in your mind it can't be foreign. The body will reject any and all foreign objects. Even if you don't speak the language natively don't try to translate. Because things don't translate period. You have equivalent meanings I will explain in Portuguese you have Saudade. I know how to use it, I know how to express myself with it but I can't translate it into English or vice-versa not that I'm incapable of doing it but because it just doesn't translate. Take this BZ PT sentence:
Tenho saudade de voce
I feel longing of you 
Things don't translate! In English I say I miss you and in BZ PT I say Tenho Saudade de voce

Take another example, jokes, Jokes do not translate well either into and from any language. If you like jokes then learn jokes in that language and tell those. The trick I use, I call it a trick because that's exactly what I do, I trick myself into believing I am a person of that language and I don't rely on my old habits of my original tongue but develop habits of the new tongue I am learning. You have to develop and form new habits that will lead you to fluency in a new language. You have to keep this going and forming more and more new habits in the new tongue. Keep this going until well you can pronounce words fluently.

Learning Mandarin Chinese

Today I found this very interesting website that gives 6,595 of the most common characters and audio on how to pronounce the words http://pthxx.com/b_audio/03_zici_1/index.html, Then on this same site http://pthxx.com/b_audio/01_langdu_1/index.html you can find stories being read to you with pictures of the actual characters and PinYin. For those of you that are brave enough this section has 10,460 characters with downloadable mp3 to practice each word.

Language Learning Resources

Today I have bought Assimil http://fr.assimil.com/methodes/le-chino ... e-cd-audio and Glossika Mandarin Fluency 1-3. I am working on getting some teach yourself stuff from eBay used and it is all coming in on Thursday. Today I went onhttps://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-pinyin-chart.php found this really cool Pinyin chart and have been clicking on each one of the sounds. Glossika also provides you with a pronunciation guide of virtually all the possible tone and sounds in Mandarin Chinese. I also purchased Pimsleur method 1-5 but I had to do the flex payment. So I can afford it. Ok, for now, that's all the spending I'm going to do since I don't have unlimited resources to just go out and buy stuff. So to recap this is all the stuff I bought:

Teach Yourself Mandarin Chinese Complete Course Package (Book + 2CDs)

Le chinois sans peine the new version 2016 from Assimil

Glossika Mandarin Fluency 1-3

Pimsleur Method 1-5

Today I am focusing on just learning tones and words and how the different tone affect the meaning of each of words. I have to figure out tongue placement and figure out how sounds are produced.