Kató Lomb (1909–2003)

Lomb's ten broad tips (with thanks to a now defunct blog called LangHack):

1. Spend time tinkering with the language every day. If time is short, try at least to produce a 10-minute monologue. Morning hours are especially valuable in this respect: the early bird catches the word!

2. If your enthusiasm for studying flags too quickly, don't force the issue but don't stop altogether either. Move to some other form of studying, e.g., instead of reading, listen to the radio; instead of writing a composition, poke about in the dictionary, etc.

3. Never learn isolated units of speech; rather, learn them in context.

4. Write phrases in the margins of your text and use them as "prefabricated elements" in your conversations.

5. Even a tired brain finds rest and relaxation in quick, impromptu translations of billboard advertisements flashing by, of numbers over doorways, of snippets of overheard conversations, etc., just for its own amusement.

6. Memorize only that which has been corrected by a teacher. Do not keep studying sentences you have written that have not been proofread and corrected so mistakes don't take root in your mind. If you study on your own, each sentence you memorize should be kept to a size that precludes the possibility of errors.

7. Always memorize idiomatic expressions in the first person singular. For example, "I am only pulling your leg."

8. A foreign language is a castle. It is advisable to besiege it from all directions: newspapers, radio, movies that are not dubbed, technical or scientific papers, textbooks, and the visitor at your neighbor's.

9. Do not let the fear of making mistakes keep you from speaking, but do ask your conversation partner to correct you. Most importantly, don't get peeved if he or she actually obliges you - a remote possibility, anyway.

10. Be firmly convinced that you are a linguistic genius. If the facts demonstrate otherwise, heap blame on the pesky language you aim to master, your dictionaries, or this book - but not on yourself.… (meer)

Very interesting stuff. I've always been interested in languages and would like to learn several (at least!). Ms. Lomb presents a very intriguing and practical method of attacking a foreign language.

My only qualm with the book is that it seems to take her a long time to get around to actually describing her learning method. Much of the book is fraught with personal and hearsay anecdotes that, while interesting, are more fluff than substance.

That said, it's a quick read and worth scanning through if you are looking to learn a new language in an efficient manner.… (meer)

No great revelations here, but there are some interesting anecdotes. (Of course, some of the other reviewers' complaints that her advice is old news may be forgetting that she wrote it decades ago. Others copy her.) The linguistic tidbits are largely outdated - such as the dreadfully inaccurate notion that women talk more than men, which has long since been disproven in study after study - but it's nevertheless interesting to hear about what worked for one very successful language learner.… (meer)