Learn a new language by ear in 3 steps!
Young children listen to their mother tongue for about 3 years. Then they speak.
Our method is based on the same principle – listen first, speak later. But for adults we have squeezed the time span down to about 3 months!
Have you been told that adults cannot learn languages as fast as children? If so we’ve got some good news for you: That’s a common misconception. Our experience is that adult brains can absorb sound patterns just as quickly and learn languages just as intuitively as children’s brains. If you have the right learning method!
We offer a unique and hands-free learning method that we call The Hofsö MethodTM.
How it works
Here are the 3 steps of The Hofsö MethodTM:
Step 1 – listen TO THE SOUNDS
Listen many times to a bunch of sound snippets which are presented in an overlapping pattern. “Many times?” We don’t mean 7 or 8 times – more like 100 times.
All the sound patterns of the language will trickle in, meaning that later on pronunciation will become less of a hurdle than everybody thinks. Don’t worry at all about what the sentences mean. Just listen and listen and listen, then you’re ready for STEP 2 …
STEP 2 – LISTEN AGAIN, WITH TRANSLATIONS
You are very curious now. Now play the sentences again – one by one this time – and listen to the translations. Just like the first step, do this many times – until the meaning sticks. Don’t speak yet.
Then go back to the overlapping patterns of STEP 1 and play them again. When you feel confident that you understand the meanings of the sentences within one second of having heard each one, then it’s time for STEP 3 …
STEP 3 – SPEAK, AND LISTEN TO YOURSELF
Play the sentences again one by one. This time after each sentence there will be a pause long enough for you to record what you just heard. Play it back and listen to your own voice. Again – do this many times, until you think it sounds good.
Do all this systematically for 3 months.
AND THEN …
… you will start speaking spontaneously!
Now you’ll need someone to talk to. But try your listening skills first. This can be
done by watching TV, listening to the radio or playing music.
When you feel ready, go out into the world and speak. You’ll be surprised at how good you have become. For some it feels like coins flushing out of a slot machine.
WHY IT WORKS
Many people believe that there are a number of different linguistic goals that can be achieved in a variety of ways.
But that is not the case.
There is a hidden barrier that means that it is not possible to learn just a small part of a language. The barrier is what we can call the “sound barrier” – because language is sound.
If you do not learn to perceive all the sounds of the language as they arise in normal everyday speech at normal everyday speed, then you will constantly lose track and not be able to keep up with conversations.
When it comes to the sounds of language, it is in a sense all or nothing.
With vocabulary, it is different – the exact opposite, in fact. Once the sound system is in place, you can get by with a fairly limited vocabulary – under one condition: that the words are not memorized one by one.
The secret sauce is that when you practice the sound system (quantum training) embedded in well-chosen phrases and sentences, the grammar sneaks in at the same time in the background and suddenly one fine day all the tokens fall into place at once – and you can converse.
This is due to something that can be described as “combinatorial mathematics”, the same that explains how a small number of lottery balls can be combined in several million ways. It’s the same thing with the words in a language. Then you can specialize in banking terminology, car parts, food or whatever and build up a larger vocabulary.
So To Speak is the only organisation that offers language learning based on The Hofsö MethodTM as described here. We have done the linguistic legwork to pick out exactly the sound patterns that you need to master a new language.
Why not try something different with our unique and hands-free learning? Our courses are the base, the platform on which you can build entire languages.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Read our white paper!
Abstract:
It may be argued that Karl Hofsö, the Scandinavian inventor of The Hofsö MethodTM for learning languages “by ear” stumbled over the method by accident. In his youth and out of pure curiosity he wrote down in long-hand the lyrics to songs by Elvis Presley and successive artists. Catching English words, phrases and sentences on the fly became second nature. The habit soon spread to other languages.
Sounds, and therefore words, are volatile. Once spoken they are gone. They need to be grasped, identified and understood during the very short span of time between their articulation and the onset of the following word. Using massive repetition, listeners get a correspondingly large number of opportunities to practise that skill. That is fundamentally what Mr Hofsö’s method is about.
During some thirty years of using languages as a business tool and as a social facilitator, Mr Hofsö developed, refined and packaged his experience into a formalised teaching method which is today known as The Hofsö MethodTM. This paper looks at both the scientific basis for the method and the accumulated anecdotal evidence that supports its successful deployment.
Download the full white paper (pdf)
HOW it all started…
THE EARLY ORIGINS OF THE HOFSÖ METHOD
The precursor to The Hofsö MethodTM was first launched in Norway in 1993. The first courses – in French and English – were available on audio cassette in 1994. In the same year, the method was first used for classroom teaching in Halden, Norway. Karl Hofsö was contracted by Norway’s then employment agency to teach Norwegian to new arrivals. In the years that followed Karl was engaged in many other contracts in Norway, providing language tuition for the unemployed, hauliers, and nuclear power workers, just to name a few. In the 1990s, the method went under the name ARM (Audio Repetition Method).
But if we look even further back than that, it all started with Elvis Presley!
The Hofsö Method 