Moses McCormick explains his technique of learning and maintaining multiple languages here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJtp10sgEhY
I've done a partial transcript covering the part where he describes how he does it. In case of any discrepancy between the transcript and the video, the video takes precedence because it's the primary source.
Around 7:45 to 8:15 he says:
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Many of you already know that I have my own method when it comes to learning languages. I use my FLR method and that is the most efficient method for me to start on a language. Y'know, you guys already seen the videos, you saw my reviews, questions and answers, key words and all that stuff, I spend two to three months working through that material and then I just start speaking with people and then from there, y'know I just um... I learn more in the battlefield.
Now, right now lemme just go through languages I'm ok... I think I'm doing about ... There's probably Vietnamese, Cambodian, Tagalog, erm... I think I'm doing about seven or eight languages right now, something like that.
Yeah, that's a lot, that's too many languages yeah. Indeed it's a lot but I'm telling you, I have an efficient method when I learn these multiple languages. Now, first of all, although I learn eight languages I'm actually focusing on one. I'm gonna repeat that... I'm learning multiple languages at the same time, but I'm focusing on one language. That doesn't make any sense, does it?
How am I learning multiple languages and just focusing on one of them? Impossible? Well, let me bring it down. First of all, the language I'm focusing on is Somali. That's the only language I'm doing full-time. Full time and every day. Ok. Now lemme... What does it mean to be full time?
So I believe when you're doing full time you're doing extra stuff. Right now for example now for Somali every day I'll listen to the audio, I'll listen to some audio files, I'm gonna watch the news or YouTube, I spend about ten, fifteen, twenty minutes of time depending on how much time I have listening to the news. Then I have my newspaper readers, I do my grammar work, and then I just listen, listen, listen, listen and review, review, review, and of course I chat with some natives online, then I go out in the battlefield and I practice the language with native speakers face-to-face.
[10:01]
But the main thing is the input at home, like what I'm doing, I have for example I could show you guys, I've showed you these books before, you can't see the cover but this is Colloquial Somali. I went through this book several times from front cover to the back, and I'm still doing it, I just go through it over and over again for revision. I'm not listening to the audio right now because I'm still listening to the audio for FLR Level Two, I haven't even completed all the... I'm almost done I have two more readings. But while I'm listening to that, I go through this book as a review. I go through the dialogs, the grammar.
And then I have another grammar book at home, I have another book... See if I can show ya real quick... I have this book here. This a grammar book I made a review on this as well. Very good grammar book for Somali. It's called Somali Textbook. It's very, very good. So I go through that, and then I have my novels. My Somali novels. This is one novel here, okay, and I'm basically just reading this. And I have the use of my dictionary just to look up vocabulary, the vocabulary I don't know. I try to do this every day. Sometimes I don't get it in every day because I'm doing some other stuff, but I do it very often.
And then as I've said, I have my newspaper reader, this... and I have another Somali novel... Common Expressions... and I have a phrasebook, and then I use online resources as well. Newspapers, you know, actually just to extra exercise, I made a video on that before. And what else, just all the exposure. Basically the extra is just for emerging that's what it is. It's a lot of exposure. When you go on full time that's the type of... But when you go on full time and when you wanna learn a language to a level like higher level, then you have to do that.
[12:13]
You have to really just focus on that one language like that. Now that's just really the only way, I mean, you have... I'm not saying that you can't put that much energy into more than one language, maybe you can do two, maybe you can do three, but now it becomes a time issue. And if you don't have the time, it's gonna be very difficult. So for me, having a family and then I've to work, you know and I have my little play time, I play my video games as well, y'know, it's really hard to juggle multiple languages in a full-time manner.
So Somali I chose to do that full time. And like I've said that's basically full immersion, a lot of reading, a lot of listening, and a lot of chatting and you know, ... all that stuff listening and listen listen listen. That's what I do.
Now, for these other languages such as Cambodian, Vietnamese, and what else... Indonesian and Tagalog... Is not... Before I get into those... In full time, when you're doing it you're really getting into the language, like what I do. I try. I really try to work on my pronunciation and my accent as well, I try to work on all that stuff. Because I think if you really immerse yourself and you do it the right way, I think you can get all that stuff down. But you have to really be focused on that particular language. That's just the only way, and that's why I said it's kinda difficult to do that for multiple languages because you have to do so much listening, it takes a lot of energy.
You see, I don't have that kinda time to do it right now. Maybe when I was a high school student or didn't have to work or whatever, I could do it but right now it's not possible. Now getting to other languages like Vietnamese or Indonesian, now what I'm doing for those languages is maintaining conversation. I'm not really putting in, I don't wanna say I'm not putting in an effort, I dun wanna say that because that's not true. I am putting in an effort to learn those two languages obviously, but the amount of effort that I'm putting in doesn't match the amount of effort I'm putting in for Somali.
[14:16]
The effort for Somali is higher. And in the other languages are there, below there right now. But it's all good because I'm still getting it in, I'm still able to maintain conversation. So how do I maintain conversation? I meet people online, practise with them very often and well just level up and practise with native speakers. That's what I've been doing for other languages.
Now, let's say I want to learn a language and, say I'm still learning Somali and I wanna pick up another language like, I don't know, let's choose a random language... There are so many languages I don't even know what to choose... er... What's a random language? I don't know... Hindi or something. If I wanna pickup... Well basically another language if I haven't studied before, let's say tonight I wanna pickup this language y'know, I wanna practise this because I'm asking people here,... then all I do is just I already know what I'm using. I'm using FLR first.
And once I use that I'm gonna get to a level where I'm able to converse. And then once I complete that course it's just a matter of revising and just practising with native speakers. That's it. Y'know I'm not gonna try and immerse myself in the language. Now when I start the Level 1, I will obviously do my listening, and try to get the pronunciation. Now I practise with the native speaker via Skype and get corrected where I need to be corrected. But I'm not gonna do full immersion because I don't have time, because I'm doing it with Somali already.
[16:02]
You see, so like I can switch up these other languages, y'know basically when I'm done with Level 1 and I'm at the point where I can converse, and I just need to learn more through experience and just revise it. That's it. I can do that for multiple languages and that's really all we do. And then in the meantime I'm focusing on Somali. Every day, you see, it's really the way I got it setup it's so easy and it's obviously cheat pretty much. It basically is like cheat. It feels so easy that it's like, I believe I'm cheating out here.
I still put the work in, but I just like to be funny, see that but basically that's what I would do. And then with Somali, I'm already a year, thirteen fourteen months something like that in Somali, and I'm planning not to spend another year, and then once I can finish with one language I am really comfortable in where I really really wanna be in at, and then I'm gonna switch that language for another full-time language. Y'know, which is Nepali which I've talked about this before. Nepali will be the next language that I'm gonna focus on and really immerse myself in.
That's the next language in 2016. I've already made my decision because it just... It's crazy here with the Nepali people. But many people ask me, "Why don't you, y'know, you just need to focus on one language, either just focus on this language and stop learning all these languages bits and pieces of blabla blablah." But y'know it's all good that people ask me that, they make those statements because they don't understand what I'm doing. They don't understand my background like how I got started.
[18:00]
Y'know, it's totally understandable. But I think I would totally agree about on focusing on a particular language but it depends on your goals. If you wanna get to like a native level, that high of a level that you don't have to set up an efficient strategy or plan or something, like how I'm doing now. So my decision is to focus on Somali. That's the language I'm focusing on when people ask me, when people tell me I need to focus on one language. I am focusing on one language and that's Somali. I don't study other languages right now like how I'm doing to Somali.
The other languages are just revision and just using. That's it. So yes, that's what I do for basically learning multiple languages. Now I'm not all over the place anymore. I have goals and I know where exactly am I going now. I know exactly where I'm going, I'm not lost, not zig-zagging, it's all in place now it's just a matter of time.
[19:06]
So yeah I just wanted to talk about that, I hope that makes sense to you guys, but yeah. Learning multiple languages is really, is a fun thing to do. And that’s... levelling up like that. Going to these different places and meet, that's another... that's more encouraging to do. Learn multiple languages because you go to these different places and you don't know who you gonna run into. You know I don't care I may miss a couple of words and phrases but it's still motivating to do that cos to run into these people and see how they react, indeed a fun thing to do.
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