Jan 02, 2014 - 10:25 PM
"(unless they're students, retired, or independently wealthy)" Well for the record, I'm neither of these. I was 27 when I went and though most people in my age group didn't stay for more than 2 or 3 weeks I decided to tough it out and stay longer. I'm not sure I'll be able to do 6 weeks again, but I'll try. If not I'll settle for what I can do. "but the reality is that most people cannot take a 6-12 week vacation." The reality also is that most people cannot afford 5 levels of a Fluenz program let alone 12 levels. That's just life. The reality also is that even if there were 50 levels of Fluenz, one cannot and Will not achieve advanced level of language without immersion- such as going to the country itself or at least talking for hours and hours to natives via skype or on the phone. That's just life and there's nothing we can do about it. To learn a second language you need either disposable time or disposable money. One or the other. If you have neither to invest you are out of luck and you're not gong to learn. Period. That's just reality. If you have no money, but have lots of time you can spend hours in the library with books and CD's and learn a lot pretty quickly that way. While if you don't have a lot of time, but have some money to spend you can get a program like Fluenz that lays everything out for you all in one place and allows you to whiz through a lesson in 30-45 minutes. You'll learn at a slower pace, but what do you expect for so little time out of your day? And for the price of 12 levels of Fluenz you can do a language program in another country- airfare, room and board included (depending on the country) and come back with a much higher level of fluency after only a month than if you were to stay in your own country for 6 months doing 12 levels of a software program. I do agree that software programs are not the fastest way to learn, but Fluenz is meant for busy professionals who may not have more than 30-45 minutes a day to spend learning. If I had the time I could just get some language books+ CDs and do independant learning or even take a university coarse and after spending time on the travel to and from the class along with the time I spend IN class, not to mention the hours after class doing the homework and studying for quizes and tests.... Either one of these methods would make me learn much faster, but the reality is that I don't have the time available for that. So my best bet is a program like Fluenz that allows me to learn a language little by little, day by day- until I'm able to finally take some time off and go to the country myself. Or at the very least- talk directly with some natives on skype. I totally get what you're saying, but I feel that if you have the time to sit in a university class and go through all the supplement materials you mentioned then you have the time to do independent study from books or even something like LingQ.com. Both of which will teach you faster than Fluenz anyway because they require that you invest much more time into them. Time that busy professionals like myself do not have which is why I'm grateful for this program.