Book review: Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous. Carl Sagan

Fluent Forever is a wonderful inspiration for language learners; it’s written with great passion and knowledge. For the author, Gabriel Wyner, the journey of language learning began when, as an engineer, he started learning foreign languages intensively as part of his other career development: to become an opera singer. 

This book by Gabriel Wyner contains some theory on language learning and lots of practical tools on how to learn languages. It explains a detailed process of language learning, with many helpful ideas and examples, as well as available resources (both as part of this book and online). It pays attention to the following learning components: memorising, pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary (with a list of the first most useful 625 words). Fluent Forever reminds us that if our goal is to become fluent and learn a foreign language well, we need to enjoy the process of learning it: we learn faster and better when we have fun.

I should say that the title Fluent Forever might be slightly misleading, the bold statement that we can have language fluency forever might be over-stated here. Language learning is a multi-layered and complex process. I want to refer to Albert Costa’s Bilingual Brain, where he points out that language attrition happens: we can (even!) forget our native language and swap it with a new one. The importance of maintaining our language skills is as essential as the learning process itself.

After reading this book, I thought about all the reasons why we learn foreign languages and how sometimes our language learning journey is a three-month relationship or can be a life-long commitment. Our reasons can be trivial or more serious, but if we enjoy the process, we may prolong our language learning plan, e.g. by adding another language and then another one (!). “If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse”, to quote Jim Rohn.

Have you read an interesting publication on language learning recently? Please let me know in the comments below.

Kinga Macalla