Idea #4: Apprendre le Français en 15 Minutes Tous les Jours

Description
I studied German in high school, Russian in college and grad school, and Spanish off and on over the years with a few books here and a few classes there. What's one more language? Here's the idea for those who do not know enough French already to read the title of this post: learn French in 15 minutes a day.

Granted, I can't speak any of these languages fluently at the moment as I am out of practice (especially my German, which I've barely touched since senior year in '99). Not long ago I heard an interview on NPR with the author of Babel No More, Michael Erard, who talked about "hyperpolyglots" he wrote about - people who have learned dozens of languages. There was another author on the show who talked about people who picked up multiple musical instruments over their lifetimes - the similarity between musical instruments and languages being that there is an underlying structure to the sounds used. Erard talked about learners of multiple languages or instruments seeming to have "plasticity," or the flexibility and desire to focus on learning new things. I also remember hearing somewhere about a person who studied multiple languages at a time by only studying each language 15 minutes at a time, then moving on to something else for the rest of the day. It's sort of a tortoise vs. hare approach.

And some might think: It's not possible to learn a language without a teacher. Actually, many of the languages these polyglots picked up are self-taught. Now, the degree to which they actually could use the language may very, but a teacher is not required so long as their is practice and the ability to learn from mistakes. I learned that from reading the blog of Tim Ferriss, whose opinion is that classes are more like training wheels - the sooner they come off and you start practicing for reals, the better.

Diligently studying French in the Metro

So I thought, how about I just start learning French? I've always wanted to, so how about I start with a book on my 20 minute metro rides to work?


Steps
1) Purchase a decent book that teaches French.
2) Spend 15-30 minutes each day studying the underlying grammar, and most-needed vocabulary, listening to the CD that comes with the book for pronunciation.
3) Improve on the basic French ability: Read blogs or Twitter feeds from French speakers to get a beeter sense of common French usage. Watch TV shows and movies in French.
4) Practice: write sentences in French. Have short conversations with French speakers. 

Originality: Doesn't everyone say they want to learn a language? Buy a few tapes, go to some classes, and then before long it's dropped and the tapes and books collect dust on the shelf. In fact, I've got those for Mandarin Chinese and Philippines Tagalog on my shelf.

Enthusiam: So far I've kept it up for a couple months. But I've also been thinking of doing this for years - now is just when I seized the initiative.

Practicality:  The key here is that I also studied other languages. That means I have already learned three things that first-time language learners (or rather, first time second language learners) have to figure out:
1) How a language is structured; i.e. the basic grammatical concepts of any language;
2) How to go about learning a language: listening for proper pronunciation, common words to study, etc.; and
3) What works best for me: Flashcards, grammar books, writing practice sentences, and (when I can bring myself to) speaking with others.

Difficulty: Learning a lnaguage to any point of actual proficiency is hard - it takes a lot of time and practice. Sure I can learn French - the question is rather "how well?"