Skip to main content

Blogging about my Internalization Method

This is a blog about my Internalization Method for learning foreign languages as introduced on YouTube here. This is a transcript of my YouTube video:
Hi, my name is Alexander Demidov. I’m a certified teacher and translator, and here I’m offering you a taste of my method for learning foreign languages, which I call the Internalization Method (метод интернализации in Russian).
The Internalization Method is based on three ideas.
One. Time. Learning a language takes time. There’s no getting around it. Babies are born with an innate ability to learn a language, but it still takes them a couple of years to start speaking properly. And it certainly takes time to learn a second language. There are no shortcuts to success. [Oh no!] You’ve got to put in the hours. [Yup.] But most people live busy lives and find it difficult to make time for this. So we must devise a way to fit it in. That’s one, time.
Two. No translation. Most people try to speak a second language by translating whatever they’re thinking in their own tongue. This is bad for three reasons: a) it’s extremely tiring; [This is exhausting.] b) you’ll never get it right; and c) you’ll always be coming up short, unable to translate this or that word, embarrassing yourself and leaving your audience hanging. [Boo!] All right, OK. [You suck!]. By the same token, formulating your thoughts in the target language will let you speak easily, idiomatically and fluently. That’s two, no translation.
Three. Internalize. Do it in your head. If you go on a course and work hard, doing all the exercises, drills etc., you’re sure to make progress. However, once the course is over, you start slipping. And soon you find yourself back to square one, all your hard-won knowledge and skills forgotten. [Ah.] My method lets you make it your own. You internalize it, it becomes part of your mental landscape, you own it, and it gives you your own personal tutor, sitting right there in your head, available and doing his or her stuff 24/7 for as long as you live. [Yea!] In other words, you move language acquisition from a brick-and-mortar or online classroom into your head. That’s three, internalization. And the Internalization Method integrates all of the above into an effective tool for language acquisition.
The bottom line: Whatever your level, the Internalization Method can revolutionize your whole language learning process in one session, getting you on track to real fluency in no time. [Oh yeah.]
And this wraps up my elevator pitch.
For a transcript and Russian translation of this video, see below.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you. Bye.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Internalization Method Presentation Format

With the preliminaries out of the way, we can start discussing the Internalization Method as such. The Internalization Method is a surefire and fun way to learn foreign languages. To make it even more fun for me – and for you, hopefully – I choose to present it in the format of a detective story, a whodunit , or a quest : I am going to discuss various aspects of the Internalization Method, providing clues (some of them red herrings , to be sure, to make it more of a challenge and to follow up on and explore for pleasure and/or profit ), and you will try and figure out what the method actually is. Alternatively, you can join my students and receive instruction straight from the horse’s mouth, without working your way through the labyrinth of mystery and suspense. Let the fun begin!   Read this post in Russian here .
Post a Comment
Read more

Project background

I took up English at 7, so this year marks the 50-anniversary of my involvement with this language . I use this occasion to unveil my method for learning languages to the international community. In 1983, I graduated from the MIFI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), where I later got a PhD and taught as a docent. In 1991, I graduated from the MGLU (Moscow State Linguistic University) as a teacher of English, French, German and Latin. After that, I taught English and French at the MIFI part-time. Then I moved on to translation, which is what I still do (check out my Multitran page here ). I also continued my language studies and added Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish and Ancient Greek to my portfolio. However, despite my extensive linguistic knowledge, credentials (see my degree  and  transcript ,  reverse ) and experience, I was still bad at speaking English and other languages, not being able to get rid of my thick Russian accent and failing to articulate my thoughts flu
Post a Comment
Read more

History of the Internalization Method

The Internalization Method dates back to the late 1970s when I discovered the Library for Foreign Literature in Moscow ( wiki ,   site ). Before that, I only had access to graded readers with an English-Russian glossary at the end , so there was no real need for a dictionary. I was, and still am, an avid reader, so I naturally wanted to widen my choice of available books to read. That is why, when I was told about this source by a classmate at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, I jumped at the chance to get my hands on some ‘real’ books. (As it turned out, few of the books the library offered were ‘real’ – most were bound photocopies of the real McCoy.) It turned out to be a veritable treasure-trove of reading matter for the bookworm that I am – I was on cloud nine. However, the books were indeed ‘real’ in that they were exact copies of the original, not adapted for easy reading in any way and had – naturally enough – no glossary at the end. To attend
Post a Comment
Read more