What were the language experiences that led So To Speak founder Karl Hofsö to invent The Hofsö Method?
Before his business and formal language teaching assignments, Karl did army service in an artillery unit in the north of Norway, worked as a sailor in international waters in the merchant navy, had student exchange jobs in Vienna, worked as a cashier in Mobil Oil’s Austrian headquarters, and as a researcher in a local government organization In Palermo, Italy. Seven summers were spent criss-crossing Western Europe by way of hitch-hiking.
This did not in and by itself lead to the development of a new method of learning languages, but things started to accumulate into a new insight of how the natural learning process worked. Contributing to this insight was the fact that over the years he had been able to pass as a native for extended periods of time in the USA, France and Germany, as well as being able to get along without the help of third languages in Italy, Spain and Portugal (and to some degree in Arabic-speaking counties).
And even further back? In a series of 4 anecdotes below, Karl gives some personal reflections on some other formative language learning experiences that laid the early groundwork for what was many years later to become The Hofsö Method.
The Hofsö Method 