Fly-by Reading

How can I remain fluent in a language that I do not have the opportunity to use every day? That is the question. If you aspire to speak more than two languages, you need to find a way to imitate the environment in which you must use those languages in your daily life in order to maintain your skills in those languages. The problem is that we sleep for eight hours a day (at least the very luckiest of us do), we work eight hours a day, and we have responsibilities beyond work that keep us busy for most of the remaining eight hours. How can we fit our languages into our day?

I have played with many techniques for solving this problem, and one of the most promising methods I’ve developed is what I call “fly-by reading.” Anyone familiar with the Speakening method of language learning is already familiar with the core practice of dividing sentences into digestible, useful phrases and repeating those phrases for understanding and fluency. There is nothing more productive a language learner can do. However, after achieving fluency in a language, this technique can be reserved for new and unfamiliar phrases only.

Fly-by reading allows us to review vast amounts of language in a much shorter time than the essential phrase-by-phrase method. However, it is only appropriate for those languages we have already acquired. Choose an advanced text in the target language that offers several translated examples of all the grammatical structures and sentence patterns commonly found in that language. Read through these examples at a comfortable pace without stopping to repeat phrases unless you really don’t understand a particular phrase. Don’t worry too much about pronunciation; this should only be taking place in your head, not in your mouth. The faster you can do this, the better.

I have a beautiful Italian language book that offers the ideal text for fly-by reading. I took the book to one of my favorite coffee shops, bought my coffee (rent for the table), put in my headphones to listen to some of my favorite music (not really recommended for best studying practice), and started my first attempt at fly-by reading. It was 10:00 A.M. I only looked up whenever I realized that someone was talking to me, then immediately resumed my reading. When I finished the grammar sections of the twenty chapters in the book, I checked the time. It was 1:30 PM! Way too long!

I immediately knew what had gone wrong. I had automatically spent too much time practicing phrases instead of fly-by reading. When I got home, I did it with my Japanese text and it went much faster. Of course the Japanese text does not have nearly so much content as the Italian text. So, I had to try it again in Italian. Success! I was able to fly by the Italian book in less than two hours.

Now, you don’t have to do the whole book in one day. One week would be fast enough. At that rate, fly-by reading can take you through several languages in a short enough time to keep your skills fresh and growing.

By John DePonte