Trying to Learn a Language? This post will show you how.

Brian is an interesting cat.

Brian and I first started talking when I wrote my post on How to Learn a Language in 90 Days (on ZenHabits). Brian told me that he had married a German-speaker — and he was going to use my system to learn German, and finally speak to his father in law.

I wasn’t sure if he would achieve it — and then he did. And then he blogged about it. Read about it:How to Learn A Language: 5 Hacks to Learning German in 3 Months.

Now, Brian is back — and he has created a system to really help people learn languages.

Take it away, Brian
——————

If you’ve always wanted to learn a language but you lack time, routine and motivation to do it, this is an opportunity for you to kick some serious ass.

Most of us are facing the same struggles, want to learn a language but have to deal with work, school, family, etc.

So this is an opportunity for you to get your hands dirty with 56 other +1 Challengers and watch up close how the best language learners in the world deal with these struggles.

What is The +1 Challenge?

The +1 Challenge is where we add a language together.

It is about adding a language that you’ve always wanted to learn or improve on, together with other awesome language learners.

It is not a competition, as your +1 Challenge is totally up to you.

You set your own goals, your own rules and you learn at your own pace.

During our +1 Challenge, we can learn from each other, struggle and make mistakes together, kick each other’s ass when we need it and have a blast while learning a language together.

Some of these awesome language learners in The +1 Challenge, like Richard Simcott, Alex Rawlings are some of the best language learners in the world and can speak more than 11+ languages.

So not only that +1 Challengers can support each other, you can also get insights from these amazing polyglots when they chimp in on a topic inside our secret facebook group. (Its like a freaking party in there, I tell ya.)

How Did The +1 Challenge Come About?

Doing a language challenge in 90 days is nothing new.

Benny Lewis from Fluent In 3 Months has been doing it for years.

Thousands or even tens of thousands of people watch him take on a new language from scratch.

Inspired by Benny, I took on the Learn German in 3 Months Challenge last year myself.

During my challenge, I met Baron Jon from Benny’s forum, who was also doing a 90 days challenge in Mandarin at around the same time.

And whenever I struggled, I would read Baron Jon’s updates and whenever he struggles, he would watch my German update videos to get inspiration and motivations.

By the end of our challenge, I met him for the first time and did an interview with Baron Jon on Skype.

When I first saw his face on my laptop, it felt like we were old friends for years and we just came back, alive, from an EPIC battle together.

Language learning battle that is 🙂

This kind of support gave me tremendous motivation when learning a language, so the idea of creating an environment and a structure to support other language learners was born.

How Can I Join The +1 Challenge?

Although I had this idea for awhile, I never thought I would launch this now, as I’ve been working on Genius+, a memorization app to help people learn a language.

But something pushed me over the edge, find out what that is and learn how you can join the +1 Challenge in this video.

Are you getting excited yet? 🙂

How Much Will It Cost?

This is the first ever +1 Challenge.

Given the amount of work that it’s taking to run it, this will probably be the only time that it will be completely free.  (Buy Maneesh a taco for hooking you up!)

As I said, this is not for everybody, but if this sounds awesome to you, here is what you need to do:

1.  Share this blog post on Facebook, twitter with the hashtag #add1challenge

2. Make a video (Must be 5 min or less) and answer the following questions

-Very briefly introduce yourself, tell us why you are joining the +1 Challenge 🙂

-What language(s) will you take on?

-What is your current level or past experience of the language?

-What is the beginning and end date (latest date, Dec 31st, 2013) of your challenge?

-What goal are you shooting for? and how will you measure your progress on the end date? Video with a native speaker? Go to the country? a test? (It has to be measurable and be specific)

-What is your game plan of learning the language?

-What materials and tools are you planning to use?

-What rules will you set for yourself?

-Create something at stake, what rewards or punishment can you create? be creative and make it fun 🙂

-How often will you make an update and where so we can follow your progress?

-Link to other channels in your video who are taking this challenge, so we can spread the words for each other.

-Ask people to subscribe to follow your progress

 

3. Publish your video on Youtube and tweet your video with the harsh tag #add1challenge on twitter before September 30th.

Remember to use #add1challenge as part of your video title.

 

4. Add this playlist “The +1 Language Challengers” on your channel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSuZNTWAHQU&list=PLIyYMvGTq-ZwL3RuBk72O4Yv5y3cNRpnC&index=1

 

This is so we can spread the words and support other +1 Challengers.

Here is the instructions if you don’t know how to do that.

 

Note: Youtube took out the Video response function, so don’t worry about it

5. After reviewing your video and if you fulfilled all of the above, I will invite you to a private facebook group where you can interact with us, ask questions and support each other.

That’s it!

I will be joining you guys and here is my +1 Challenge application video, so you can get an idea what your video should include.

Leave a comment below if you have any question.

I look forward to watching your video and going to battle with you in the next 90 days!