How about learning Hungarian?

The photo  was taken in front of  Hungarian
Institute in Paris. 

I have been reading a blog and watching the videos of a great English polyglot,his name is Richard Simcott, he decided to test the real efficiency of a very famous method called Pimsleur (see the link to his chalenge here), this method has helped me a lot with some languages that I speak, so I am personally a fan of this method, but I have never used it with languages I have no previous knowledge of even interest, Richard proposed a challenge of thirty days to examine the efficiency of this method, and what gained my attention was the fact that I have no interest in the selected language, that is hungarian, and I have never read or even heard this language before. So I decided by myself to get into this challenge as well and see how important is the inner wish to learn a new language.

Sometimes in this blog and in my lessons with my students I am in the habit of emphasizing  the fact that you need to be motivated, but now I realised that motivation is important but it has nothing to do with passion for the language itself, in this case Hungarian, that is if I really put all my efforts to learn something even without liking it I CAN really learn it. Richard wants to check the efficiency of the method itself, but as I believe in the method I want to check the factors: motivation and desire for a language in particular.

I will try to answer the following questions during the next 30 days:

1) Shall I be able to learn a language and speak it without  any interest in it, if I put all my "obsession" in learning it?

2)Is the method effective because of the method itself or because of other factors? 

Maybe together with Richard's conclusion (please check his website to keep updated) we can examine how far can Pimsleur take us in its first level, and other backgrounds in learning a foreign language.

How do I follow Pimsleur Method?

As I mentioned before I have already used Pimsleur, so I am familiar with its procedures, thus I simply follow its instruction, that is listen to one lesson a day and answer when it is required to do so, out loud. When I have an available extra time I do the lesson again on the same day, and I usually do not use other method while doing Pimsleur.

How about the reading?

When you get at a particular lesson the audio will ask you to read the accompanied booklet to have a contact with the written language as well.

Obviously, as I said before, I am obsessive for the language learning itself so during the studying period I listen to musics and podcasts, read books, watch tv program everything in the target language, but not other methods because I prefer to know a course content quite well and completely than just a part of many others, but I use several authentic material to improve the contact.

Do you want do get into the challenge as well?
Be free to do it, we started it on 15th of Abril 2012.

Where can you know more about this method and buy it?
Sites like ebay (mercadolivre, mercadolibre) sell second hand Original Pimsleur courses, or you can go to the offical site by clicking here to know more and buy the course direct with them, keep in mind that we have no conections with the producers of this course and no money transaction is involved in this challenge, it is just a free initiative to help other language learners to choose material.

How can you follow the challenge?
Simply by visting this website (add it to your favourites), or at my twitter or facebook.

In a short time I will post somethings and some extra material I am producing, like flashcards to help me (and maybe you) in this process.