An Interview with Language Transfer’s Mihalis Eleftheriou

Language Transfer is a really interesting and completely free platform for helping people learn a new language. It breaks away from the traditional endless memorising of words and phrases and encourages you to learn the language by experiencing it.

Over the last couple of months, I have been taking the Spanish course available on Language Transfer so I have first-hand experience of its effectiveness compared with other methods I have tried in the past.

To find out more about the project and the man behind it, I chatted with the founder of Language Transfer, Mihalis Eleftheriou.

If you Google “Learn Spanish”, you will be met with a myriad of both free and very expensive courses that for the most part rely on the learner memorising words and phrases which often results in failed attempts to learn the new language.

Language Transfer utilises a different method that breaks away from this memorising. Can you explain what that method is and why it produces better outcomes for the learner?

Indeed! And I strongly feel that all of those programmes that commercialise one way or another the fantasy of learning another language to then present you with endless memory items, really do a disservice to the learner who is often likely to decide that they just can’t learn languages!

I’ve just finished a 400+ page book about the Thinking Method, so I evidently find this a complicated thing to summarise! I guess one of the most striking things for readers of the guidebook, from the feedback I’ve had so far, has been how the guidebook is not only centred around the experience of the course writer but mostly around the experience of the learner. When you do a Language Transfer course, it becomes starkly clear how most other courses are not thinking very much about your experience as a learner!

In short, Language Transfer doesn’t just have some great material and ideas about how language works but weaves it together in a way that departs from, and is governed by, the learner’s ongoing experience of piecing this all together.

As someone who is actively taking the Spanish course you’ve created, I was struck by how quickly and easily my knowledge and understanding of the language has grown but has also how it has been retained. The process of deconstructing a language to its core to be then able to create a course that allows the student to learn like this I imagine is very arduous.

Can you give us an insight into what that process involves and how long it took you to create the Spanish course for example?

Course writing is indeed arduous, but that makes the courses a doddle for the learner! Most of the difficulty that the learner would have had, has been had already (and resolved) by the teacher/course writer.

The process requires a lot of thinking, questioning the established understanding about the language, finding more coherent alternatives to explain the language, then trying to prove oneself wrong – all whilst being firmly rooted in the learner’s ‘mental theatre’; following their expected experience as we write.

Personally, I write many versions of a course, or rather I write and edit/rewrite continuously whilst also practising the course on test students. But it’s an all-consuming process, so whilst you are course writing it doesn’t matter where you are, you are exposed to language and it’ll make you think, you’ll get ideas, and lose yourself fighting with them whilst someone is talking to you…

It’s much like in any artistic process – there’s a point where you feel it’s good enough and you tell yourself you can always make another one anyway! It’s never perfect, but it can have enough moments of perfection to forgive it for that!

During your courses you record sessions with a student who is taking the course with you for the first time. As a result, when you listen to these lessons it almost feels like you are learning the language with them. I found this to be an interesting way to judge my own progress as I went along and it highlights common mistakes or traps that learners fall into.

I am interested to find out where people could expect to be in their language learning journey after completing one of Language Transfer’s courses. What has the feedback been like from people who have completed the course and do many go on to fluency?

How far one goes with a language, when given all the tools, is just about how far they insist on going with it. Language Transfer parks the car and leaves the engine running, but the learner has to insist on taking it out for a spin.

That doesn’t mean just using what one is comfortable with, but constantly analysing the language one is exposed to, in the ways promoted during course time. If one does so often enough, then fluency, or more than fluency, is guaranteed.

Every day I get feedback that nothing has worked like Language Transfer, even for folk who have tried unsuccessfully for years to learn a new language! The most interesting thing about how Language Transfer works in that regard is that so many learners greatly surpass my own level in the majority of the languages, as in most cases I have learnt the language in order to write the course, and then have had to move on to the next language before reaching any level of fluency myself!

All of the course material in the different languages available has been created by you and made freely available. What were your motivations firstly to create this method of learning and secondly to make it free for people to access?

My motivations are so varied and shift with time, but mostly I am excited about language and as a person, I’m excited about sharing anything I’m excited about!

When I recognise the therapeutic benefit in something, that excitement doubles, and I think new languages are a source of experience that can be an antidote to anything from ignorance to depression.

My insistence on it being free has much to do with the way I feel I/we need to interact with the (semi-civilised) world, which is from a stance of collaboration rather than competition.

It also means that money doesn’t make any decisions when it comes to course writing, only learning does!

The philosophical, for want of a better word, side of things also motivates me. Different languages tell or suggest things about the world and reality to us which are often a little mind-blowing, I love not only sharing those things but using that information as a learning mechanism.

This has surely been a difficult path to take. How is Language Transfer currently funded?

Language Transfer is entirely funded by donations made by the users (Patreon and occasional donations). There are no sponsors, adverts, no monetisation of data, no sign-ups, nothing!

That took a long time to build up, and the pandemic has invariably helped as everyone is cooped up entertaining themselves with the internet, with time for things they don’t usually have time for. So things are going much better and I’m even looking to hire folk! It’s amazing that I can finally begin building a team in this way, with this hard-won freedom to simply build the best courses I can without needing to answer to some funder that would invariably not understand them!

You are currently looking to take on new course creators and fill other positions that will help you grow Language Transfer. How is that going and what are your future plans for Language Transfer?

It’s going well in the sense that whilst I was looking for one new team member, the donations increased and now it’s two, and will hopefully soon be three!

But employing is an entirely new thing for me, and the pandemic has of course complicated any process of meeting and finding the right folk for Language Transfer, but I’m on it!

The long term plan is to have a busy bustling team creating material non-stop (both audio and visual) and to branch out with the Thinking Method into other areas which aren’t a language.

I’m currently (slowly) working on ‘Introduction to Music (Theory)’, which will be the first non-language course to showcase the method.

What languages are currently available to learn and what languages do you plan to add in the future?

There are currently nine courses: Introduction to French, Turkish, Italian, Arabic and English (for Spanish speakers) and Complete Spanish, Greek, Swahili and German (which is an unfinished course).

Anything could come in the future, but the priority is with finding new teachers to finish/rewrite Complete German, and to build Mandarin and Japanese.

These languages were chosen by the Language Transfer users in voting campaigns but it also depends on the talent that arises. If the perfect candidate for Russian pops up tomorrow, we’ll have a Russian course! So in short, pretty much anything could happen from here on out!

How can people find out more about Language Transfer and start learning?

Language Transfer now has an app, otherwise, you can visit  Youtube or Soundcloud, as well as download links here www.languagetransfer.org.

Facebook is the principal place for updates for now, and some interviews can be found on the Youtube channel too!